A rare rant

(envision me with wild grey hair, one hand waving a walking stick while the other hitches up my suspenders, periodically thumping the ground with the stick for emphasis)

So what the hell is going on with kids these days?

I work in a library, at the front desk. So issuing library cards is part of my daily duties. And just about daily, I encounter kids who can't even fill out a simple form.

I'm not kidding here, folks. They are unsure what the date is or how to write the date. They don't know their zipcode. Many don't include their middle name because they aren't sure how to spell their middle name.

But most amazing of all to me is that many do not know their own address. The name of the street, or the number -- but not both.

I'm not talking about tweenagers here; these are kids who will soon be trying to get a driver's license, kids not far from what is euphemistically referred to as their "majority".

When this first occurred, I thought maybe it was exceptional, that I was seeing evidence of the "put the special needs kids in the regular classrooms" policies of the last few years. But no. These are average kids, lacking average life skills.

These same kids will ask us the time, even though the clock is easily visible. This is not a smartass prank -- they truly cannot tell the time because the clock is analog.

Not being able to read a round clock is something I actually understand. It makes sense -- most of the clocks these kids have seen while growing up have been digital, and not learning the skill to read analog is not a big problem as long as the digital alternative is available.

But try as I might, I simply cannot find an available alternative for knowing your own address. This is pretty basic information for anyone, especially anyone living in our modern world which requires such things. (And properly spelled middle names, to keep your accounts straight from others with similar names.)

Perhaps, though, it is a matter of perspective. Perhaps I am so much of the old school that it is hard for me to comprehend the viewpoint of these new denizens of the commercial world. After all, a physical address is less relevant when you can get your paycheck deposited directly to your bank account and your bills can be paid automatically from that same account. Why print out a bill, stuff it into an envelope, mail it off, have someone retrieve it, open it, and perform the reflexive act? Easier just to swap electronic permissions.

One already hears of young people who think of themselves as "citizens of the world" rather than tied to any particular address, dipping into the dataflow from wherever they can have access. For them, home is wherever their cellphone is, or wherever bandwidth is available.

This view makes a certain amount of sense, and I am actually very curious to see what the world will be like when these folks grow to an age of more impact. What happens to wars, embargoes, nationalism, and centrism when people have little use for the concept of national boundaries and no inherent regional loyalty?

But I still have to recall something I was told way back in my own youth. An educator confided in me that, regardless of age, there were some basic criteria which had to be met before kids were accepted for school. These were: knowing your address, being able to tie your own shoes, and having enough bowel/bladder control to be able to raise your hand and ask to be excused.

Now, for many teenagers untied shoelaces are de rigueur. And thankfully, I have little data on hand about teenagers' bathroom habits.

But it still brings me up short when I think that these people who will soon be driving cannot pass a test which was once required just to get into the first grade.

Accessing the Future

I spent time this weekend with someone who had one of those snazzy new IPhones.

It truly is an impressive gadget, sleek-looking and with an intuitive interface which makes it as much game as tool. Watching him use it (as an early adopter he has already had time to make it look easy) made me want one. The ease of handling images is especially attractive. In fact, it is so darn slick that you just want to fiddle with it endlessly.

But it also got me to pondering how such a device will change discourse as we know it. This is not news, to anyone who has been reading science fiction for the last decade. But projections and actualities still taste different when you bite into them.

Devices like the IPhone simultaneously expand upon and distract from the conversation at hand. Expand upon, because any conversational reference or question can be quickly researched. Distract from, because people "leave" the conversational arena to do the research, running as a "parallel processor" but not fully in the conversational flow, to re-enter when they have completed their search.

Too, near-instant access to corroborative information puts people on the spot while conversing. Any statistic, factoid, claim or historical reference can be challenged and quickly researched.

This is a mixed blessing. Questions arise in any discussion, and the ability to quickly find answers can be a joy. (Such as finding the proper attribution for a quote, or the date of an event.) But what if a discussion devolves into a debate, partly because the means to test the facts as presented is close at hand?

At this stage in the game, with so few such devices in circulation, it rather gives the upper hand to those holding them -- anyone going up conversationally against someone with one had better have their facts straight, because those facts may be acid-tested even as you speak them.

I have to wonder what it will be like when most people can have such devices -- "winning" a conversational debate may be a matter of who can access the information the fastest, each proferred statement followed by feverish surfing around the internet, victory to the fastest thumb. I must admit such a prospect wearies me already...

Like everything else involving the internet, it is a functional dichotomy. We all know bombastic folk who love to hold forth on all subjects -- and are often equally wrong on all of them. Having a tool on hand to easily challenge their positions would be nice. And those in positions of power could stand with a bit of real-time fact-checking when they are making promises and claims. But I would not like to see a world where discussion is constrained because each word is checked and cross-checked as it is heard.

Especially when so much information on the internet is of dubious reliability. The average searcher rarely goes into the third screen of results (consider this: a screen of results looks even larger on a handheld device, and it takes more time/effort to get to the next screen). But just because something appears on the first screen of results does not mean it is valid. Nor does having 6 of 10 search results agree -- if all of those results come from the same erroneous source.

So the greatest benefit of the internet -- instant access to information -- can also be its most misleading feature. The internet is simultaneously a great bullshit detector and the greatest means ever devised for spreading bullshit.

Interesting times, we live in. This change is occurring around us, and the change is accelerating. But the biggest changes are yet to come.

I know this, because I saw it on an IPhone.

The extended family

So let's talk for a bit about kithship.

It's not a term one is likely to encounter. Occasionally, you might run across the word "kith", usually as part of the term "kith and kin" (with all of its associated connotations of hillbillies, moonshine, and the Hatfields and the McCoys...).

But it is a concept which is all around us, and is daily being experimented with even though most people involved in the process are unaware that they are players and would probably not use the term.

According to the dictionary, kith means:

1. acquaintances, friends, neighbors, or the like; persons living in the same general locality and forming a more or less cohesive group.

2. kindred

3. a group of people living in the same area and forming a culture with a common language, customs, economy, etc., usually endogamous

It is very interesting to see the dictionary provide "kindred" as a synonym, an indication of the drift the word has undergone, since kindred is defined as:

1. a person's relatives collectively; kinfolk; kin.

2. a group of persons related to another; family, tribe, or race.

3. a relationship by birth or descent, or sometimes by marriage; kinship.

4. natural relationship; affinity.

The first 3 definitions blur any distinction the words once had.

For me, the definitional difference is very clear:

Kin is the family you are born into.

Kith is the family you choose.

Kinship is under stress in our culture, and in most technologically-advanced cultures. People live longer, move often, practice serial marriage/divorce, and multi-generational households are increasingly rare. Inheritance is not what it once was, since an adult may live long enough to have several families.

In such an environment, it is not surprising that kithship is being pursued by so many. Your kin are blood relations. Your kith are your social relations, your network, your "acquaintances, friends, neighbors, or the like" as the dictionary says, "a group of people living in the same area and forming a culture with a common language, customs, economy, etc." Your kith are the primary group, support group, touchstone which the family may no longer provide.

As the old saying goes, you can't choose your family so it's nice you can choose your friends. And choosing friends is what the vast people-catalog of the Internet is all about, people seeking out kith along myriad guidelines, requirements, and parameters -- a grand fluid experiment in kithship.

I feel kithship, even with its archaic overtones, is a vitally current concept and the word deserves exhumation. Resurrection.

And, returning to an earlier and primal theme, I would offer the simple idea and definition that your kith are those folks you most like to have intercourse with.

Lessons of the day

There were some lessons lurking for me today.

The pressure tank on our household water system has been out -- wouldn't hold pressure for long, the bladder was shot. (The role of the tank is to maintain a background pressure, so that the pump doesn't have to run just because you flush the toilet.) While waiting for the financial fluidity to front the money to replace the tank, it was possible to keep up the integrity of the system by charging the tank each morning with an air compressor, a task doable but tedious.

Today I finally went to pick up the tank, got it home, and got my first little lesson of the day: whereas the Home Depot website had assured me that adapter fittings were included with the unit, there were none in the box. Just a little reminder about trusting Purported Reality over Real Reality. Trips to both local hardware stores gained the part I needed, but it took quite a while to hunt it down. Once the part was on hand, actually installing the tank was anticlimactic and took less than five minutes. The system is working fine now.

After monitoring the performance of the tank for awhile and being sure that the system was working properly, I went out to work in the garden -- something, I have come to realize, I typically do after any frustrating interaction with equipment or technology.

As I pulled weeds, with Einstein the Dog and his playmate Casey happily splooshing about in the irrigation water, I ruminated over my reactions to the challenges of the day. After several weeks of having to daily address the problem with the water system I was sure 'nuff ready to be done with it, so when the required part was not in the box, necessitating not only a trip back to the store(s) but also a tiresome search for the right adapter, I was balanced on the knife edge of getting rather grumpy about things.

But I was raised by folks who were raised on farms. Both of my parents grew up rural -- my father was driving a produce truck into Boston at the age of 13 -- and people raised that way tend to have a pretty practical way of dealing with things. Both of them also spent time in the military, a place where a methodical approach to necessary tasks is implicit. And, I have come to realize and better appreciate, they passed some of this viewpoint on to me. Why waste time and energy on flipping out over a problem, when that same time and energy can be applied to resolving the problem as quickly and cleanly as possible?

While I was thinking about this, I had a fresh appreciation for the analytical approach they inculcated in me: look at a problem, see how you can fix it, decide if you can fix it. When I was a kid, if the toaster went on the fritz we didn't just throw it out and buy a new one, we took it apart first to see if it could be fixed. (Which it usually could -- often, they just need a good cleaning. I did just that here at the house last week.) We did our own landscaping, built our own walls, fences and outbuildings, maintained the infrastructure of the property. If something broke or wore out, we would always take a stab at dealing with it before calling in the (expensive) specialist.

Living with and from that viewpoint, you pick up skills and accumulate tools which help you address problems. One important tool is a good handle on your own abilities, what you can achieve with a little thought and determination, and also a realistic sense of your own limitations and when you really do need to call in the specialist.

Another important tool is the belief system that one can fix things, that if you stay calm and examine things from several different angles and gain some insight into how the whole darn thing is supposed to work, you are already halfway to seeing it working again.

There are some increasingly specialized devices in our hands now, things which truly do need priestlike specialists to fix, and things which are often better replaced than actually repaired. And this causes many of us to sometimes feel helpless and at the mercy of the specialists. But there truly are still many things in our lives we can control, problems we can address, if we only take the time to think it through and keep the faith that we are capable of fixing problems.

Thanks, Mom. Thanks, Dad. It took me a while to fully appreciate it, but your teaching and example has always helped me to approach a problem as reasonably as possible, and helped me feel less at the mercy of the vagaries of the universe.

The Death of the Blurb

Perhaps you recall several well-publicized scandals over the last several years involving blurbs -- those punchy, laudatory little quotes you see on book jackets and movie posters.

You know the sort of thing:
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"The best of this year, or any year!" - The Sandusky Times Calendar
"The author sets a new standard for horror!" - Bestselling Author Joseph Bloodbath
"I couldn't put it down!" - Winona Ryder

It has traditionally been the practice of publishers to solicit blurbs from popular authors to help promote lesser-known writers. (Easier to do when the popular author is published by the same house -- an accepted "you-scratch-my-back-and-I'll-scratch-yours" policy, though sometimes embarrassing when it becomes obvious that the blurb writer never actually read the book...) Similarly, movie promoters would use positive reviews -- or, more to the point, short excerpts from positive reviews -- on movie posters to catch the eye of those wavering as to where to spend their cinemagoing dollar. (Ten dollars, is more like it now!) The bigger the name of the blurbist -- Stephen King, The New York Times -- the bigger the presumed effect. It may be argued that prominent critics exist as much to provide quotebites as to advise moviegoers.

This works fine for blockbusters, but what of the lesser works? Promoters sometimes have had to go further afield to get admiring text to quote; where the Los Angeles Times might be critical, perhaps the folks in the hinterlands might be more lenient. So the quoted text on the posters kept getting bigger and bolder and the attribution line smaller and fainter:

Knock-your-socks-off action! - Podunk Marketer's Gazette

This practice reached a ridiculous low point with the most highly-publicized of the above-mentioned scandals, the David Manning/Sony fiasco, with a studio-constructed "reviewer" creating blurbs for their films. And those few viewers/readers who actually paid attention to the sources of blurbs lost their remaining innocence.

So blurbs have been questionable for some time, even before the Internet opened up a much wider selection of possibilities. But just when you think you have seen the bottom, you find out the ooze is deeper still...

I was at Hastings the other day, perusing the shelves while they dug through my box of trade items, and an indie horror movie caught my eye, "Urchin". One of the blurbs mentioned that it was shot guerrilla-style in the subways and sewers of New York, the other cover blurb praised it highly. Got my attention. Then I noticed the attribution line on each of the blurbs:

- IMDB Review


Just that. Nothing more. My jaw dropped.

Now, I am fond of the Internet Movie Database as a resource. I use it almost daily, as a first stop for release info and cast/crew details. And I have myself contributed information to it, including reviews. But the reviews are user-provided. We're not even talking Film Threat or AintItCoolNews here -- we are talking average folks. Anybody can post a review on IMDb. Many do, including the director of the film and his friends -- the first few reviews are often so laudatory, so high and glowing in their praise, that it is embarrassingly clear that it is the filmmaker in alias or an associate of the filmmaker who is providing these early reviews. (This effect is so obvious that it has become a standing joke among regular users of the site.) (This effect can also be clearly seen on Amazon.com -- read the first two reviews of any small-press book and you will get a press release and something from a friend rather than objective reviews.)

Don't get me wrong -- I have a certain degree of respect for the "average" reviewer. It is in fact part of the reason I frequent the IMDb: to get a taste of the zeitgeist surrounding a film. The average movie enthusiast can have insights every bit as valuable as the most-circulated reviewer.

But using an anonymous and easily constructed source such as "IMDb Review" as the attribution for a quote is so patently absurd that my jaw is still hanging open at the sheer import of what it says about how our view of "respected opinion" has changed.

RIP, sweet blurb. Your time has passed.
We shall never see your like again.

BlobFest

Well, darn.

Seems we missed out on the 50th anniversary of the filming of "The Blob" at the annual BlobFest in Phoenixville, PA where the 1950's monster classic was filmed.

Link to an article about it:

Link to BlobFest article

It seems that one of the events for the 50th anniv. party was a parade featuring folks carrying fire extinguishers. CO2, of course. Remember? -- it can't stand cold!

The Criterion Collection release of the 1957 film is almost indecent in the quality of the image -- it looks veritably 3D. That old film stock looks so much better than many a modern film, even for the drive-in B-pictures.

Unlike Roswell, which tries to parlay the alleged UFO crash into continuing tourism dollars, Phoenixville has something real to offer: the very movie theater which people streamed out of as it was being assaulted by the pink-red gelatin of the Blob.

How many other odd little festivals are there like this lurking around the U.S. and the world, just waiting for visitors?

And while there has been some alien-themed music bandied about at the Roswell doings, nothing they come up with can compare to the theme song from the movie!

But don't take my word for it -- someone has very kindly bootlegged the opening credits onto YouTube.

And so you can sing along, here are the lyrics (which are courtesy of Burt Bacharach!):

Beware of The Blob!
It creeps and leaps
And glides and slides
Across the floor
Right through the door
And all around the wall
A splotch, a blotch
Be careful of The Blob

Complete with finger-in-the-mouth popping noises...