Checking the mailbag: Hanes, their way

Sometimes it seems people have a bit too much time on their hands:

Back in July of 2010 I wrote a post where with my usual light-hearted tone I took to rhetorical task the "lay-flat collar" on Hanes t-shirts, noting grammatically it should be "lie-flat" but I conceded how that didn't play as well from a marketing standpoint. I don't recall that getting any more significant response than any other post.

Then a couple weeks ago I received an email from someone identifying himself as "Ryan" and as a "partner with Hanes." He complimented the content in a single sentence that gave no specifics about what was good—"Great piece of content, by the way!" (Yep, with an exclamation point and everything.).

Then he got to the reason he wrote. He asked if I could add a link to the official Hanes website (and included the hyperlink to Hanes.com) to help my readers access their site. He followed that with some sentences conceding he knew some editors might have issue with that, so it was offered as a request and not a demand.

Claim to fame: Your source for that one 3D Picnic song's lyrics

After a decade of having the blahg the main thing it has had to show for existing is being referenced as an authority for the world's largest corn dog. There are other posts that get a reasonable number of hits as well, certainly, but the corn dog is the star.

However, I've found that something else distinctive I've done with it is when years ago I took the time to transcribe the lyrics to a song. With the many websites that focus on song lyrics you'd think there'd be no way I would need to go to such effort, but with the relatively obscure L.A. band from the late '80s/early '90s called 3D Picnic their catalog didn't appear to garner attention on such sites. But their quirky punk roots rock was right up my alley.

Back in January of 2011 I posted the lyrics to their song "Charles Thinks About It" which is rather blithely optimistic in its tone (unlike much of the music from that era) during a time when I would post snippets of lyrics in a "Lyrics du Jour" segment (which was no daily). With that song, however, I was inspired to include them in their entirety. It just seemed worth doing, even though it involved that old school method of listening to the verses over and over.

No more heroes

The clear inclination to dig up dirt and air everyone's dirty laundry of the internet age (combined with the oversharing potential social media offers) will eventually render no one to be admirable in even the slightest way.

That may not be an altogether bad thing.

Discuss.

Problems of the internet age: Olympics humor edition

At some moment over the weekend, after seeing my wife search on our TV box for Olympics coverage by typing in the term "XXX" and noticing the results in the guide were listed as "XXX Summer Olympics" I'd been meaning to make the rather obvious quip about that on the blog/Facebook/Twitter. In fact, I likely would have conceded it as being so obvious that I'd have phrased it thusly: "I'm not the only one who looks at 'XXX Summer Olympics' and thinks the events should be ones unfit to be shown on network TV, right?" However, being one who doesn't live on those sites (and who had his computer die a week ago and has had to devote time to getting a new one up to speed), that thought merely ran through my mind, escaping out the other side without inspiring me to actually go to the computer and put it out there.

(As noted in the last post, this is an era when such things must be shared, mustn't they?)

Something I must share with you

The other day I saw something posted by a friend, which was a graphic with the text "I always wanted the power to read minds, then I joined Facebook and got over it."

It's nothing new to suggest the various online outlets allow for no shortage of "over-sharing" where a fair number of thoughts that perhaps would have been better kept to oneself get aired in a public (or at least semi-public) forum. It seems pretty clear that genie is out of the bottle, and short of unplugging the entire internet we're not going back to some world where that isn't the norm. Obviously that is throwing the baby out with the bathwater, for a problem that is only a problem if one chooses to engage in the social media/blog/comments realm. One can turn off one's devices or not go to particular sites (or not scroll down to the comments section) to avoid that if one so wishes.

The thing is: We don't.

House Hunters in the Outhouse

My wife and I are people who keep the TV on more than we should. Allow me to concede that right up front. We watch (as in, actively choose to pay attention—or as close to that as anyone does in this era of Twitter and iPads and the other diversions that can co-exist with TV viewing) a fair number of shows, but there's also times when we put something on that's mostly just background—well, more pseudo-background, as it can prove to be something that gets as much attention as the shows we actively sought (and probably recorded) but without us having the specific intention of devoting ourselves to it in any way. It's something to have on while, say, making dinner, or cleaning up after dinner, or after going to bed as something that won't be disturbing and where it doesn't matter if we fall asleep part way through the episode.

Over the past couple months we've switched over to making HGTV that just-throw-on channel. People buying houses or fixing up houses or designing houses is innocuous enough to not be disturbing, but can still be compelling enough to sometimes make us back up and watch the beginning again if it gets interesting later. And we figure it might help motivate us to get back on the hunt for a property and stop renting.

So... (explained by Lexicon Valley)

The Lexicon Valley podcast returned this week with an exploration of starting sentences with "So"—not the adverb to enhance meaning ("The meat was so well done that it tasted like leather.") or to indicate "therefore" ("We have no apples so if you want fruit you'll need to eat an orange.") or to mean "to facilitate" ("There need to be an equal number of players on each team so the game will be fair."), but as an indication of a continuation of a interrupted thought ("So where was I? Oh, right…"). However, there's a more and more common tendency to start non-interrupted thoughts with "so" in conversations.

In that case the purpose of "so" (it was suggested) was to direct the conversation in a different direction than it previously had, one that's more germane to a tacit or overt agenda ("So regarding that item you mentioned last week…"), where there's a sort of implicit continuation of something that wasn't necessarily said; it was a segue of sorts.

Hello Internet: The Simpsons do not live in Oregon

So Simpsons creator Matt Groening admitted in an interview that the inspiration for the name of the town where the fictional family came from the town of Springfield in his home state of Oregon. Given that he named the family on the show after his real life family, it's not surprising he didn't stretch that far for the moniker of the place where they live.

The name.

However, then the internet went apeshit claiming that Groening had revealed the Simpsons lived in Oregon, rather than merely that he came up with the name from the location in the Pacific Northwest.

Google+: Is there room for another social media site?

Can Google+ supplant Facebook as the most popular site (as Facebook did with MySpace, and MySpace did with Friendster)?

I have not even seen Google+ yet, as I am not one of those who has received an invitation (as they did with Gmail accounts initially, they're doling them out sparingly presumably to create a sense of exclusivity—when in fact the early adopters are likely just beta testers who don't realize they're helping get the kinks worked out), so I cannot comment on whether I think this new player has the likelihood of usurping the king.

But that won't stop me from offering unfounded speculation.

Bing and Facebook: the union of the uncool

The internet search—sorry, "decision" engine Bing has taken to touting how the search results it provides can reflect what one's Facebook "friends" have "liked."

This takes as its premise that one and one's friends (no quotes) are still (or ever were) actively using Facebook; further, conceding they are, that they have somehow been persuaded to click the Like button on pages for the sort of things for which one would be searching; further, it presumes that one's list of Facebook "friends" (which likely includes a number of mere acquaintances who were added without thinking) are the sort of people whose opinions should be trusted.

Social media reveals our anti-social tendencies

On the blog of a nice person (who left a comment here on my blahg*) is this post where she pondered whether smart phones and text messaging and Facebook, etc., is creating loners who interact primarily through devices and don't call others or visit others in person.

I left a comment wherein I posited that this era of "social media" with the suggested incongruity of being "connected" but not connecting was not having a transformative effect. People who essentially forsake face-to-face (or voice-to-voice) contact and dwell on that touchscreen device are ones who likely would have been what would be considered "loners" in an earlier time, and people who want to visit or call will still visit or call. The technological advancements have merely enabled those who didn't necessarily care for the requirements of the old days.

Bear in mind: Some loners are genuine misanthropes, but some are merely people with busy schedules or who do not wish to spend time with those in their immediate vicinity (perhaps because they live in place where most others are not like them). Or maybe they're shy in person. There could be any number of reasons.

But people are whoever they are, irrespective of technology. New avenues offered by advancements therein only reveal what we secretly were before.

Technology changes nothing about human nature

The internet has a simple formula, that continues a pattern that has existed for millennia:  The popular and successful are mocked by the less-popular and less-successful.

Envy and humbling are how we tolerate each other.  Don't be shocked it is that way, and the way it will continue to be.

Paying for the news

The New York Times has made another stab at putting online content behind a paywall, striving to be the one to start the push back toward people paying for the same journalism that they were willing to pay for in the days when we got stained fingers from the newsprint. Of course, the only reason that people nowadays lack the association of paying for online content is because there's so much of it available for free, and perhaps because years ago these sources of professional content underestimated the role the internet would come to play in our daily lives and started giving it away, figuring it was merely a way to promote their paper editions.

While there's always going to be those who will find the ways around a paywall, just as there's those who still download music illegally, there will eventually come a time when paying for quality journalism online will be as simple as it is to download music through legal sites such as iTunes, and it will become standard for people to pay to get at content. (We all adopted the cable TV model, where we simply accept the need to pay monthly to get our channels, rather than getting a free signal through antennae.) And there will then grow up a generation who will be baffled at the notion of getting someone's hard work for free.

Or journalism will have run out of money and we'll get the news through amateur videos on YouTube.

That's a likely possibility as well.

I guess we'll see in due time.

A modest open letter to Social Media

Hi Social Media. I know we haven't had the best relationship. I never knew about Friendster until MySpace had replaced it, and even MySpace held no interest for me. (Back when I was in a band there was no such online outlet for us to promote ourselves, but any realistic appraisal of how we were would conclude it's very much for the best that we didn't have MySpace around.) Even after my wife and a number of others I knew joined Facebook I resisted—and I have fully admitted that by the time I gave in and signed up it was mostly just to get them to stop hounding me. With Twitter (now 5 years old) I'd dismissed it for the longest time and only signed up late last year, and my tweets have been very intermittent much of the time.

But I have kept at it (I log in to Facebook more often than most of the people I appeased when I joined) and have even garnered one bona fide follower on Twitter.

Anyway, Social Media, I need to apologize to you. Last week I went to an event where semi-famous people were assembled and I simply sat there and paid attention to what was going on, without tweeting a single thought, without snapping a photo to upload to Facebook, and even later on I didn't blog about it. I concede that by contemporary standards this lack of acknowledgment on any or all of your various outlets makes it as though I wasn't really there, that I did not enjoy it as much as I perceived I did while I was experiencing it, and that in your eyes I have brought disgrace upon myself and upon the entire network of people with smart phones/tablets/laptops with wireless cards.

I do hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me, and I fully understand why you do not devote much of your valuable but limited attention span on me.

Speaking of social networking, in way more than 140 characters

The term "twit" means "to taunt or ridicule" (as a verb) or "a fool" (as a noun). That's from the dictionary. That's worth bearing in mind when one thinks of Twitter; the name suggests it's fools mocking things (or each other), and while in the realm of the internet that's hardly unique to tweets, there is the implication that Twitter's initial raison d'etre was to allow for foolish quips. That's not to say it cannot be used for more significant purposes, as it's apparent role in the recent "jasmine revolutions" in the Middle East and northern African nations have suggested, but it's probably best not to expect anything more of it.

Last week I was on a website (which seems marvelously old school compared to these social networking sites that seem more apt for smart phone apps) where there was a window to show a stream of tweets on the topic at hand (the Oscars, of course), and below the post in the comments someone remarked on this and noted how this showcased his complaint about Twitter: it's a bunch of voices crying out into the void, without eliciting a conversation.

Which, as I've said above, is not what one should expect of it.

Okay, maybe you can call me blogger

Last week I balked at the term "blogger," due in part to it being a title based on the format. That, to be fair, could be semi-hypocritical in light of how "columnist" is an accepted title which clearly stems from the format (where the writing appears on a page in a column). Admittedly, columnist could be as vague, but in my opinion it is relatively definite (oxymoron intended) in the way it connotes someone writing with a perspective (bias) on a regular topic, and where it is presented in a specific format (to distinguish it from the at least ostensibly unbiased journalism that appears elsewhere.

Which, when it comes down to it, is one possible definition of what a blogger is. As less columns are published on paper in magazines and newspapers, "columnist" does fade as applicable. Perhaps "blogger" should be the officially recognized replacement term for when those erstwhile column content is posted online.

Don't call me blogger either

One of the blogs I read from time to time, I Will Dare (the personal one from the woman who started the Paul Westerberg fan site), had a post last week titled "Don't Call Me Blogger" where, as that title suggests, she refuted accepting that moniker for what she did. She began by admitting her original reluctance stemmed from her aspirations to be a "serious" writer and her belief (back many years ago) that no serious writer would blog. Obviously that's not the case, especially these days, but what now precludes her from perceiving herself as part of that is how the "blog" is done as a marketing tool; it's done to promote something the blogger had to sell (be it an object or a service or what-have-you), and as she was not shilling anything it was not apropos. (My summary doesn't do it justice; you should read it yourself.)

Both of which are fair points, I'd say, provided we could all agree that there's a singular definition of what a "blog" is (and, correspondingly, what a "blogger" is).

About the only aspects of a blog about which we could get some agreement is that it's a website (or part of a website) with material posted by date; a "blogger" is one who contributes content thereto. Beyond that, there's undoubtedly a fair amount of personal association the individual brings to the table.

Yahoo!, I give up

Last month I offered this post about a blurb on the Yahoo! home page where they didn't seem to grasp what "ironic" meant.

Today there was this front-page story regarding the Miss Universe pageant:

Zooming in you can see the final link noting the response of Miss Philippines that may have cost her the crown as being "ironic":

That link takes you to their recurrent web series, Prime Time in No Time, a snarky recap of the previous night's TV. In that video we see her answer to the question (from judge Billy Baldwin--seriously) where she claims to never have made a "major, major" mistake in her life (and it's speculated that is where the judges turned on her)

Note that In the actual content there's no allusion to that potentially ruinous remark as being "ironic"; it's only in that blurb on the home page that the term is employed.

So, fine, Yahoo! front page blurb writer: You win. "Ironic" is now beyond how the Alanis Morissette song would have it be defined; it is whatever you need it to mean. "Blithely stupid"? "Hideously off-putting"? Sure, why not?

Your persistence has worn me down past the point of caring. Heck, let's call that ironic. My astonishment that the Miss Universe pageant still exists? Ironic! That I continue to visit your site? Let's call that tragically ironic.

What's on the mind of Facebook users? If only they'd tell us...

Sometimes it seems as though someone needs to remind users of Facebook that what used to be the status update now is preceded by the text "What's on your mind?" It used to be a mere matter of what one was doing, but now it's a matter of what one is thinking. And not only whatever happenstance topic that runs through the consciousness but something that is persisting in some way.

In short, there's a tacit suggestion on the part of the site that what one enters in that field should be more than a direct summary of what one is doing (or has done); there should be some sort of hook, some angle that makes it interesting even in the most rudimentary sense.

Let's look at a theoretical example:

Enough talking

There's no questioning that a lot of people are very gung-ho supporters of the iPhone, and even with the significant problems that the new 4 model was revealed to have after its release and the less-than-contrite response from Apple about that there's little question that the iPhone remains a very in-demand device. In large part, I think that's because even with earlier models and the coverage by AT&T the users are accustomed to poor connectivity when making calls, and that hasn't driven customers away in the past, so the faithful aren't as troubled as one might otherwise expect.

Yes, there are many who've expressed dismay and Consumer Reports could not endorse the new 4 with its problems, but overall I don't perceive that the reputation of the iPhone has dropped to the level of other smart phones. One could easily quip (and I'm sure someone already has) that with all of its marvelous apps but the fact it doesn't handle making actual calls that well it's ironically named. But the thing is: I know many people who have iPhones and when I've discussed it with them many of them freely admit that they don't use it to make calls very much. It's not that they have given up on trying to make calls due to the issues; the way they interact with others using the device does not involve much voice-to-voice communication. So it's not that the irony is lost on them; they simply have embraced it.