Apr 25

Forslug

v., To lose or destroy through idleness or sloth.

“He forslugged his once profitable farm away.”

Apr 23

Weepy

n., A romantic and sentimental film or book.

“Who’s Nicholas Sparks?”

“Oh, you know, that guy that writes all those weepies.”

Apr 21

Quotable: Nicholas Day

“We know the fat content of elephant seal milk, for example. (It’s basically fatty fat with fat sauce.)” –from an article on Slate.com on the history of wet-nursing.

 

Apr 19

VBS Development Diary #11: Act 3

This week marked 4 months since we started working on this year’s VBS. Typically at the 4 month mark we are getting ready to perform, but we haven’t even created any props, sets, or costumes, and haven’t rehearsed a line. In fact, the performers don’t even have the script yet.

The reason is this: despite a good plot and a good first draft, the script wasn’t really that great. It didn’t stink–but when I finished the story, even as the writer, I felt kind of let down. Not quite end-of-a-Michael-Crichton-novel kind of let down (I’m looking at you, Sphere), but definitely underwhelmed.

So by mid February I knew the final act needed some work. The problem is, the last night has a lot of action, and I kind of stink at writing action scenes–I’m more of a story-and-dialogue guy. The funny thing is I’ve been listening to a podcast about screenwriting, and both screenwriters on the show mentioned that they hate writing action scenes as well. So I knew it was going to take some focused time and attention, which is always hard to come by.

Then the last two weeks of February blizzards hit mid-Missouri and I got three free snow days from work. Now, how to do this? Thankfully, I still have about a bazillion action figures–some I’ve had since I was a kid. Allison and I busted out the WWE wrestling ring playset, assorted G.I. Joe, Star Wars, Total Justice, and Lord of the Rings figures, as well as a tub of Jenga blocks.

We set up the Jenga blocks to roughly simulate the set for the last night’s action scenes, then placed the figures roughly where they would start. Then we basically played with action figures until we worked out the placement of the actors and how they would interact, then performed the scene while describing what was going on and filmed it with the iPhone. Within probably 90 minutes we had solved our last night’s plot problems and worked out all of the action scenes.

It was a good thing we filmed them, too. When I finally sat down last week to transcribe the voice notes from those video storyboards, I realized that I had forgotten almost everything we had recorded–I guess my brain didn’t feel the need to remember since we had filmed them. I wrote the first of three action scenes the other day.

The reason I am spending all of this time when I already had a finished script in hand is that there is no fix for a bad script. You’ve probably seen movies that tried to compensate for a bad script with special effects, sex, or explosions, and in the end, it was just a sexed-up, impressive-looking, explosion-filled bad story.

There’s no fix for bad writing other than good writing. Hopefully the extra effort will in fact prove to be an improvement.

Apr 16

The Hunter

My daughter’s cat, Mr. Pucko, likes to kill things. He was so adorable when he killed his first bird that we wanted to commemorate it, so we made a little bird grave with a little bird tombstone. It seemed pretty funny at the time. Over the next couple of weeks he would bring back more birds and even a snake and we buried those, too.

Spurred on by the permanent monuments to his hunting prowess, he has continued to reduce the neighborhood’s wildlife population–birds, squirrels, bunnies. Each time he brings the carcass (or what is left of it) back to us and sits waiting until we bury it with a grave marker. It’s kind of macabre, really–the entire front yard is full of tiny tombstones. One of them has little bunny ears on it. The neighbors are starting to wonder what is going on, and people drive slower as pass the house, now. Still, it keeps us from having bones and feathers all over the yard.

But things are staring to get a little out of hand. Not content to merely kill things and have them chucked in a hole, Puck is starting to hint that he wants to have them stuffed. Taxidermy is expensive, especially when someone has eaten all of the meaty bits out of the critter. On top of all this, he wants them mounted on the wall. At cat height.

That was the last straw. The last time he brought a little animal corpse home, we just let him sit there over his kill, ignoring the dour look on his little face.

However, I’m starting to feel a little nervous. You know how cats tend to walk between your feet when you are going down stairs? I wonder if he is doing it a little bit too much.

I hope he’s not reading this.

I am so scared.

Apr 14

Beats me

If you call someone because you require assistance with something, they may need some information from you. If your response to said inquiry is, ‘beats me,’ that is very rude–you should not be surprised if they in turn are rude to you–or if they do in fact beat you–because you deserve it. You wouldn’t accept such a solution from them; why would you think it would be acceptable to offer it to them?

So instead of copping an attitude and running your mouth like this:

YOU: I am having difficulty with my computer/car/air conditioner/phone.
TECH: What kind of computer/car/air conditioner/phone do you have?
YOU: Beats me.
TECH: Die in a fire you stupid harpy.

Try this instead:

YOU: I am having difficulty with my computer/car/air conditioner/phone.
TECH: What kind of computer/car/air conditioner/phone do you have?
YOU: I don’t know the answer to that question. Could you tell me how to find that information?
TECH: I’d be happy to. Just follow these instructions….

Despite the fact that many technicians are very knowledgeable, I have never met one who altered my disbelief in the existence of ESP.

Apr 12

Chreaster

n., one who attends church only on Christmas and Easter, or adj., ‘Chreaster dad,’ via Wes Molebash‘s Insert [IMG].

Apr 10

Bonnet Ripper

n., a romantic novel set in Amish country. The phrase is a play on the term ‘bodice ripper,’ which refers to a typical romance novel. Unlike most romance novels, known for their sexual content, bonnet rippers are entirely chaste–though they may contain as much as a kiss or two.

Credit for coining the term goes to the L.A. Review of Books. via Tim Challies, who has drafted an amazing Ultimate Christian Novel.

 

 

Apr 07

First two rules of I.T.

Note: if you don’t work in I.T., this post might be a little too cynical for you. In that case, you will just want to move on to the next post.

For the rest of us, however….

 

Every profession has its own list of rules for succeeding, and I.T. is no different. Unfortunately, our rules are a bit more cynical than others:

  1. Don’t trust the user
  2. Cover yourself

1. Don’t trust the user. The reasons you don’t trust the user are:

a) the user is probably incorrect and/or

b) the user is lying.

1a. The User Is Incorrect. Why might I surmise that the users are incorrect? Sometimes it’s simply because they are ignorant, and that is fine. It is OK to be ignorant, but you still may be wrong. Sometimes it is because they’re dumb and they don’t want to change. Changing from being dumb involves effort, and once you know how to do something you are responsible to do it. So some users stay dumb, so that everything can be I.T.’s fault. We frequently hear this from users:

“I’m just not very good with these computers.”

The first personal computer came out in 1976. One year before Star Wars. If personal computers were people they would already be middle-aged, on their second mortgage, and worrying about life insurance and their kids’ braces. Thirty freaking six years personal computers have been available. Thanks to the internet, widely available for at least 15 years, there are more free resources to help you use these newfangled contraptions than ever before in human history.

Another reason is pride. On a consistent basis we ask people to see if something is plugged in or not. Sometimes they get huffy about it. “Of course it’s plugged in! I’m not stupid!”

We in I.T. love this sentence. One, it conveys that the user hates us. But we don’t hate them–until now. Two, it conveys that the user is in fact stupid. The key differences between simple ignorance and actual stupidity is that ignorance is not in and of itself bad, and ignorant people can learn and be less ignorant. Stupid people cannot learn–because they refuse to. Third, we love this sentence because we work in a profession where we plug and unplug things to and from other things ALL DAY LONG.

Guess what? Sometimes we do it wrong. Sometimes we assume something is plugged in and it isn’t. Sometimes it really, really looked like it was plugged in–and it wasn’t. We ask ‘is it plugged in’ because we have learned the hard way from experience that sometimes stuff isn’t plugged in–no matter how much you would have sworn on your child’s life that it was.

1b. The User Is Lying. Why might I surmise that they are lying? Because they are still breathing and I can see their mouth moving. Nah, I’m just joshing ya. Sadly, however, part of my job involves having people ring my phone and lie to me. All. Day. Long. I surmise that a user is lying because a lot of users lie. Yes, I know this is stereotyping, but if you are going to cover yourself (see point 2) this is something you should assume.

2. Why should you cover yourself? See 1b.

 

Apr 05

putten

I have heard this word a couple of times this week: putten. As in, “I called earlier and you had putten a ticket in for my computer.” Merriam-Webster defines it as “dialectal past tense of put.”

Putten.