Too Much Information: The Private Life of John Q. Public

I SEE LONDON, I SEE FRANCE

Anyone here been strip-searched at the airport yet?  Mark my words, folks:  It's coming soon to a theater near you.   Reminds me of when I was really little and I had a cousin who used to bust in without knocking when I was using the bathroom, setting me up for a lifetime of urinary paranoia.  At the time, I couldn't have imagined a worse invasion of my privacy.  That is, until now.

By now, you've probably heard the news:  In response to the near-miss “underwear bomber” scare back on Christmas Day 2009, the body scanning technology that had heretofore been resisted as too invasive is now being installed in airports across the country.  As a result, people's naked bodies will be scanned for the viewing pleasure of airport personnel, all in an effort to head off terrorist attempts.

Of course, we are assured that these airport images are only accessible to a single employee who has no personal contact with the passenger being scanned.  Of course, we are assured that the images can't be saved, printed or transmitted, and are “instantly deleted”.  Of course, we are assured that security personnel in the United States aren't allowed to have cameras or mobile phones or any other device that would enable them to download or otherwise copy the image (which also supposedly blurs out the individual's face and naughty bits).   Blah blah blah.  Of course!  And I don't believe a word of it.  Because it stands to reason that if terrorists are forever able to come up with new ways to beat the security system, then sooner or later airport personnel making minimum wage will come up with a way to beat the "safeguards" in that system. 
 
One way or another, you can be certain that immaturity will ALWAYS find a way and that sooner or later there will be wholesale distribution of naked body images among airport employees for the purposes of derision or titillation (no pun intended) or profit.  Remember where you heard it when the inevitable loophole rears its ugly head and we're all left scratching our collective heads and wondering what went wrong. 

Now, don't get me wrong:  I'm right there in lockstep with the majority of the flying public in my willingness to compromise my privacy ideals in order to feel a little safer.  But this whole “react-after-the-fact” approach just smacks of too little too late, perhaps appeasing the masses but really just plugging yet another hole in security that will no doubt ultimately be replaced by something else.

And to make matters worse, there is skepticism about whether these scanners even work for their intended purpose.  (Though it's hard to be certain, since no network news reporter worth his or her salt is willingly going to submit to the scan and have their naked images broadcast before the nation just to see if and how the thing works.)

Given all this, it's amazing to me that there has been surprisingly little uproar over this latest assault on the dignity of the flying public.  Just a year or two ago, this drastic step would have been all but unthinkable.  But it now seems that people will agree to just about anything in order to feel safe.

I find myself wondering how this happened and how we got to this place of virtual transparency in our lives and beings.  The primary answer, of course, is and always will be 9/11.  As with so many areas of our lives, 9/11 changed everything about how we think about individual privacy and its place in our hierarchy of erstwhile non-negotiables.   At the nation's airports, at the very least, privacy's place in that hierarchy has become practically subterranean. 

Now, I don't think that 9/11 was the first time that privacy took a back seat to safety concerns on a widespread basis; but I do believe that 9/11 and its aftermath of fear, mistrust and anxiety made such invasiveness a little harder for us all to resist.  

But fear has become only one of many motivating factors.  For some time now, the imperative of safety against terrorism has been inexorably morphing and expanding into everything from the dating world to plain old civilian eavesdropping, in some cases for no better motivation than to satisfy our thirst for convenience or our idle curiosity.  And with each instance of the chipping away of the privacy wall around us, it becomes that much easier to submit to it in all areas of our lives.  

FAME AND MISFORTUNE:  OR, CAN I HAVE MY FIFTEEN MINUTES OF FAME BACK?

Jacqueline Kennedy once famously remarked that “[i]t's really frightening to lose your anonymity at 31”.  Nowadays, I'm thinking that if you've reached the age of 31 and have any semblance of anonymity or personal space, then you are a rarity indeed.

It used to be that privacy was the one glaring advantage that “average” people had over the rich and famous.  While celebrities and politicians served as the lightning rods of attention, drawing the stares of idle curiosity away from the rest of us, we “non-famous” were free to sin in private, going about our daily toils and troubles away from the prying eyes of complete strangers.  It was almost as if the famous were the “sin-eaters” for all of us, having traded in the sanctity of self for celebrity and status. 

But that's all changed, especially in the past ten years or so.   Willingly or not, we've all become celebrities, casualties of the electronic culture wars.  With the explosion on the scene of camera phones, intrusive reality shows featuring Mr. and Mrs. Nobody, and assorted ever-more-amazing technological advances that allow us to spy on one another to our heart's content, each of us plays a starring role in the secret lives of strangers.  As a result, we are subjected to the same lack of psychological and personal “space” as traditional stars, but without any of the perks that go with fame. 

And it's all too easy to become desensitized to it, until of course we're victimized by it, as happens all too often when we entrust our personal thoughts and personal information to technology that is supposed to enhance our lives but which all too often endangers our dignity instead. 

WITH FRIENDS LIKE THIS, WHO NEEDS FRENEMIES?

I'm sure by now we're all familiar with the well-documented dangers of the World Wide Web so I won't rehash them here.  Still, whatever lessons we may have learned from privacy disasters like the AOL search data leak from 2006, it's apparent that those lessons remain secondary to the ongoing lure of the Internet itself.  Because despite such wake-up calls, people still go online with impunity and make search queries by the millions (myself included).   But as long as such data is stored intact by providers such as AOL, Microsoft or Google, it's vulnerable to disclosure, whether through subpoena, data breach, or just plain human error.  You see, when it comes to your online activity, your private thoughts are never really your own.

But it doesn't necessarily take a massive data leak by a faceless corporation to expose you, body and soul.  While we've long been conditioned to focus on “Big Brother” types of privacy violations, we might do better to worry about our neighbors and fellow citizens on the street.  After all, it's worth noting that the aforementioned leaked search data was the same type of information that the Department of Justice had tried (unsuccessfully) to subpoena for anti-terrorism purposes shortly before the leak, but it was our fellow denizens in cyberspace who did the real dirty work by downloading the data for their own nefarious purposes.  Suffice to say that without much effort (and even less compunction), people can find out just about anything about you, and they're doing so by the millions: 

Background checking services that used to be reserved primarily for government offices and corporate environments are now offered to those looking for information about prospective dates, baby sitters and neighbors.  A hearing device currently advertised on television allows you to eavesdrop on the private conversations of unsuspecting others.  (And the accompanying visual of the hearing aid wearer grinning away as she listens in on the conversations of her neighbors from a distance is just plain creepy (not to mention pathetic).)

And these days, there's probably no greater threat to your physical privacy than the camera phone and digital camera.  Flickr, an online photo-sharing site, contains thousands of photos of people who are obviously total strangers to the photographer and who just as obviously gave no permission for their images to be posted online. (That is, unless you're of the opinion that the chunky young woman with the low-riding jeans who was photographed from behind as she lifted herself out of her seat at a baseball stadium was A-OK with having her butt-crack exposed to millions of Internet voyeurs?) 

Yet these photos, which often include derogatory and derisive comments, are available for unlimited viewing as well as download and broad distribution via a creative commons license.  Think about that the next time you're out in public and otherwise minding your own business (or anyone else's).   Oh, and for God's sake, pull your jeans up!

But even digital cameras can't compete with the mayhem to be wrought by a fool with a smart phone that has the latest bells and whistles.   Google Goggles, for instance, allows smart-phone users to photograph an object and use that photo to conduct a real-time information search on Google.  Sounds pretty cool and convenient, until you stop to realize that this application also has facial recognition capabilities.  What this means is that the potential exists for photographing a stranger on the street and searching for information about them through the Internet with the push of a button (letting your fingers do the stalking, as it were). 

For now, Google is blocking these facial recognition features until they can gauge consumer reaction to “possible” privacy concerns, but I'm a little unclear as to why Google finds it necessary to conduct a survey on the matter (though I suppose I should be grateful that it even occurs to them).  It shouldn't matter how many of Google's clientele object to facial recognition features due to  privacy concerns.  All that should matter is that anybody objects, because it seems to me that millions of Google users can't diminish a single individual's right to be left alone.  Call me a sentimental fool and a loose constructionist, but that's the way I see it.

And those who would disagree would do well to remember that electronic surveillance works both ways:  Google's “G1” mobile phone is one such device that provides Google with access to the user's Web-search history.  And all of this data, along with the user's email, contact lists, geographical location, instant messages, personal calendar and video downloading, belongs to Google for as long as their retention policy dictates.  Meanwhile, other mobile phones enable third parties to track the phone user's movements through cell-phone towers and GPS (though the same thing could've been accomplished with a dog collar and a microchip).

Karma, thy name is Bitch ("Miss Jackson" if you're nasty).


IN CONCLUSION

When I think of all the technological advances of the past few years that have gone to market before thorough consideration for the consequences, I can't help but wonder where it ultimately will end, and at what point we will finally reach the angle of repose on this all-too-slippery slope.

I'm reminded of that scene from “Jurassic Park” where the dinosaurs have run amok (all too predictably) and the character played by Jeff Goldblum tells the Richard Attenborough character that “your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.”  They never do, Jeff.  They never do.

Which is why the next time you find yourself in the airport security line, you'd better pray that you're wearing clean underwear.

Tiger in the Rough

Man, I don't know about you, but am I ever tired of seeing, hearing, and reading about Tiger Woods.  Everywhere you turn, it's all Tiger, all the time.  Which is why I think it's my turn to add my two cents to the cacophanous fray.

Let me first preface this commentary by saying that I really don't “get” the whole Tiger Woods phenomenon, probably because I just don't get the appeal of golf as entertainment.   There have been other golf superstars before Woods, and no doubt there will be many more after him.  But I simply don't understand how someone becomes an international superstar because he can play golf.  Oh, I get that there are lots of weekend warriors out there who fancy themselves Tiger wannabes, but where is golf's value as a spectator sport? 

Nor do I have any particular interest in Tiger's recent peccadilloes.  I don't admire him any less (mostly because I didn't especially admire him in the first place, given my documented disdain for the game of golf and for the cult of celebrity).  Nor do I feel all kinds of offended by his behavior, since it's not like he's my husband or otherwise owes me anything.  To me, he's just one more famous person whose reality is a lot uglier than his image.

So put another way, you might say I have no dog in this fight (but enough about Michael Vick).

But be that as it may, I do acknowledge that Tiger Woods is a household name and, until recently, that that name was gold in the advertising world.  And as I see it, how far he makes it back into the public's good graces (and therefore Madison Avenue's) depends on three things:  1)  that he continues to be a “winner” at golf;  2) that he's popular and well-liked (which for many people equates with winning); and 3) that he convinces the public that he's told us the “whole truth” about his transgressions and that he's sorry for having committed them (and whether it is indeed the whole truth or just a good acting job is seemingly irrelevant).   And this is never truer than in the world of professional sports.  And if that sounds cynical, well, it's meant to be. 

Truth be told, there's plenty of cynicism to go around, from the sports stars whose arrogance comes from knowing we'll overlook just about anything as long as they give us a wink and a smile (and a championship); to the public whose moral compass is incapable of finding True North when a "fan favorite" is involved.

Or perhaps it's the corporate sponsors who are the most cynical of all.  How can anyone view the latest ad from Nike featuring a silent Tiger Woods (prominently displaying the Nike logo on his cap) being "scolded" by his dead father and not feel manipulated by Nike?  Sad thing is, there's a significant segment of the population that is all too willing to be manipulated for commercial gain.  And for that reason, it's all too certain that Tiger's current and former corporate sponsors are sitting around and withholding final judgment on their association with Woods until they get a sense of which way the "Q factor" winds are blowing. 

What it all boils down to is that our capacity for forgiveness and compassion as well as our moral outrage are all relative and all subject to compromise.  Who we revile and who we revere in the face of public scandal says much more about us than it could ever say about the “scandalizer”, and goodness knows we've all had plenty of experience in being judge, jury and career executioner.

After all, celebrity is all about building a person up with unrealistic expectations and then knocking them back down with an overblown sense of moral outrage when those expectations are not adequately met.  Nor should it come as any great surprise that fame is a double-edged sword:  If you're big enough to be worshiped from the gallery, then you are certainly big enough to be taken down by a fickle public. 

That being said, whether a public figure ever makes it back up from the depths of public scorn is primarily a function of the public identifying with them while still being able to feel morally superior to them.  (Hence the inevitable jokes that will forevermore accompany mention of Tiger Woods and others in the same boat.)  And the lynchpin of that co-dependent process is the wrongdoer's primetime (and more often than not, self-serving) mea culpa, served up for your approval on the televised altar of public opinion.  

It's predictable and like a well-worn scene from a morality play:  For the American public to forgive the transgressor, he must first come clean about himself or else suffer the consequences.   As a case in point, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens will forever be baseball pariahs not necessarily because of their “sins”, but because of their perceived arrogance.  In short, their refusal to tell us the truth about their use of steroids and/or performance enhancing drugs (also known as “PEDs”) is what sealed their fate.  Add to that the fact that Clemens and Bonds are not likeable characters.  Never were, and never will be.  And ultimately, there is no forgiveness where there is no good karma.  

And now it is Tiger who has taken his first steps on that well-traveled road to redemption, having gotten the public apology out of the way before venturing out this week into the safe confines of the Masters Invitational.  We'll soon see how well he's laid his groundwork, but judging from the reception he's gotten at Augusta, the early returns look good.   I'd venture to say that sometimes being “popular” (the definition of which varies from person to person) is all that's needed to make a sincere apology all but unnecessary and any transgression short of a felony irrelevant.  And even then, the felony had better be a big one.

If you are a thinking individual, perhaps such a schism should be a source of cognitive dissonance for you.  At the very least, it should make us all a little bit uncomfortable in making value judgments (be they pro or con) about total strangers. This is especially true when the only "value" involved is whether we think that that stranger is a “good guy” or even a “good-enough guy” because he's good at what he does with a puck, club, bat, hoop or pigskin.

It's all well and good to pillory celebrities, politicians and sports figures or to deify them.  Whether these people “deserve it” or not is beside the point, as it just comes with the territory.  But let's at least be honest with ourselves about why we're doing it and drop the pretense of moral authority.

Opening Day Nostalgia: Snips and Snails and Red Sox Tales

When I was growing up, I lived in a neighborhood with lots of kids and one of the things we used to do was play pick-up baseball games in the field across the street from my house.

We all had different skill levels, but my brother usually pitched (sometimes for both teams).  I remember that as I would flail away helplessly at each pitch, I'd hear him yelling at me from the pitcher's mound:  “Choke up on the bat!!” (the “dammit” being implied).  Well, I could hardly see him in the summer dusk, never mind the baseball, and I'm afraid it showed.  And “choke up on the bat?!”  What did that mean, anyway?  Did bats have necks??

As I stood in the “batter's box”, baffled, I could feel the disapproval of my silent teammates.  The air was so still, that above the steady drone of cicadas and tree frogs we could all hear our shortstop's mother calling him home for the night, but pretended not to notice.  This was serious business.

Eventually, my brother would stalk from the mound, rearrange my hands in what I could only assume was a “choked” position, and return to the mound—all so he could blow it by me with a clear conscience.  It was mortifying, but par for the course at that age.

You see, growing up I was the youngest of three kids:  My sister was four years older than me, and my brother, eight.  And those of you who are the youngest in your family know what that means:  I played the dual roles of being the pampered baby of the family (allegedly), while also being the constant target of gang teasing by my older siblings.  I was also the one who had to “ride the hump” in the back seat during family car trips, seated between my brother and sister and being constantly shoved back and forth if I dared to move in either direction.  (But I would have my revenge as only a kid could, for I was prone to carsickness and I knew how to use it!)

For the first fourteen years of my existence, I shared a room with my sister, and for seven of those years, we shared a double bed.  I refer to this period of my life as “doing time”.   Being older than me (and therefore bigger), my sister would hog the blankets and the bed until eventually forcing me out of bed and onto the floor.  It was a nightly ritual.  For seven years, I learned to dress for bed in layers and to wear a helmet. Being in such close proximity, it's only natural that my sister and I argued a lot, playing starring roles in each other's weekly confessionals at church.

But things were a bit different with my brother.  He seemed somehow “exotic” and “worldly” to me.  I don't know if it was because he was so much older than me, or just because I didn't have to share a room with him!    But for whatever reason, I looked up to him, and that meant trying to do the things that he did.  I read the same books, listened to the same music, even studied his Boy Scout handbook (especially the section on tourniquets with the gruesome illustrations).   But more than anything, that meant living and breathing baseball, whether I liked it or not!  And at first, I. DID. NOT.

But a funny thing happened:  Through osmosis, I learned to love the game on its own merits.  I remember racing home from school to listen to the spring training games on the radio.  I watched the regular season games on television, and I studied the box scores.  Summers were lived to the soundtrack of Red Sox baseball.

And then, when I was about thirteen, my brother took me to my first Red Sox game at Fenway Park.  It was like a Red Sox bat mitzvah!  I don't remember who won the game or even who the Red Sox played that day.  What I do remember is walking into Fenway for the first time and being shocked by the brightness of the colors.  It was like that moment in "The Wizard of Oz" when the black and white magically transforms into glorious technicolor.  In my mind's eye, I can still see the neon green of the field; the brilliant red, white and blue of the American flag snapping briskly in the breeze;  the dazzling white of the Red Sox home uniforms.   I was in awe at seeing my heroes live and in person.  They really did exist outside the confines of my TV set!

That was such an innocent time for me—and for baseball.  The game was still steroid-free, and it was still a game, not so much the business it seems to have become.  And it had a simplicity that appealed to me at that age:  There were clear cut good guys (the Red Sox, of course) and bad guys  (everybody else, but especially the New. York. Yankees).

A local columnist once described Red Sox fandom as being the equivalent of a yearly reenactment of  the “Stations of the Cross”.  But I could never be that cynical (and being raised Catholic, I could never get away with being that blasphemous either, but that's another story for another day).  Instead, what I did was revel in every Red Sox victory, whether they made the playoffs or not (which was just as well, since in those days they seldom did).  And I enjoyed the bond I shared with my brother over baseball.

Now, this is not to suggest that my relationship with my brother was perfect.  Far from it.  Like any older brother worth his salt, he was endlessly irritating.  He would tease me relentlessly (and still does), and he wasn't always the best of role models.  I can still remember that when he would babysit for my sister and me, he'd make raw cake batter for our supper and call it a night.  But I cried when he moved out of my parents' house.  It felt like the end of something.  And it was.  But baseball remained a constant between us.

At Christmastime, I'd give him The Baseball Encyclopedia and a subscription to The Sporting News.  He'd give me tickets to Opening Day, and we'd go together.  When I married my husband, my brother walked me down the aisle (but only after confirming I had not planned my wedding on a date that would conflict with the baseball playoff schedule (AS IF!)).

Through the years, common interests have come and gone, but baseball was always there to keep the lines of communication open between us, even during those awkward times when we otherwise didn't know what to say to each other.  Even today, when I hear Red Sox news, I find myself thinking, “I need to give my brother a call”.

For I like to think of baseball not only as a harbinger of spring, but as something that can bring people together who might never connect:  People of different nationalities; different political persuasions; and especially different generations.

And now, another new Red Sox season is upon us.  For all our differences, we will collectively watch that first pitch, sharing the moment but each alone with our memories.  Mine will be of a hot summer evening in a tree-lined clearing, my brother's voice calling out to me to “choke up on the bat!” (with the “dammit” being implied).

Photo credit:  
Photo used by permission and license of adjustafresh. 

Man's Inhumanity to Man's Best Friend

I was going to write about something entirely different this week, when this story caught my eye and I knew I had to change direction.

In a nutshell, the story was about a Pekingese dog that was abandoned by its owners in a suburb of Boston and died of pneumonia a couple of days after being brought to a local animal hospital.  But that's not even half the story.  According to the article, this poor animal was “ensnared in its own fur” and couldn't even see or move due to its severely matted fur.  He was covered in his own feces and, according to the vet who treated him, probably got pneumonia from “breathing in feces and bacteria for years”.  His owners could not even be bothered to drop him off at an animal shelter, so they just left him to die.

Stories like this make me sick.

Gandhi said that “[t]he greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated”.  Given the frequency of stories like this, certain citizens of this planet are neither terribly great nor terribly moral.  What they are instead is terribly cruel, and that cruelty diminishes us all as human beings, especially when we tolerate such behavior either directly or indirectly through ineffectual legal remedies.

It's easy to treat the strong in society with dignity and respect, as we really have no other choice if we want to succeed and survive.  But it takes pure empathy and caring beyond one's own selfish needs to do the same for an animal.

To be sure, we as a society like to toot our own horns as being the “superior” species, above and beyond all the creatures beneath us on the evolutionary ladder.  We like to believe that our abilities to think and reason at a higher level, our advanced language skills, and for all I know our ability to text each other through our cell phones all somehow entitle us to the self-serving belief that all non-human creatures exist solely for the purpose of serving us and our whims.  We arrogantly assume that animals exist merely for our own entertainment, sustenance or usefulness.  But while we may have superior reasoning skills to those of, say, dogs and cats, we also have a far greater capacity for cruelty.

If the sheer inhumanity of inflicting this kind of suffering is not sufficient reason for cracking down on this type of cruelty, then perhaps the more selfish reasons are sufficient:  Do you or your children really want to be around people that have such disregard for the pain and suffering of others?  Do you honestly believe that such people's antisocial attitudes begin and end with cats and dogs?   Personally, I think there's something truly frightening about any so-called human being that demonstrates such a lack of empathy toward another living creature. 

The fact is, we all get outraged and condemn the people who do these things and who otherwise neglect and abuse animals (and I use the term “people” very loosely), but it keeps happening anyway, doesn't it?  I'm sure part of the reason for that is that the legal penalties for such cruelty are completely insufficient, amounting to a mere slap on the wrist.   You're likely to do longer jail time for stealing a car than for torturing an animal.  It's about time that society and its laws took these cases more seriously.  Maybe then such stories would be blessedly few and far between.

When I was a child, I would hear that animals don't go to heaven when they die because they have no souls.  Sometimes I think it's their owners who have no souls.  At any rate, it's clear that people like the owners of that poor, neglected Pekingese have no heart.

Stories like this make me sick.

Scared Straight into McDonald's: Through the Clown's Mouth, Darkly*

*To paraphrase one Frasier Crane.

I'm going to get straight to the point.  I think there's a vast conspiracy among the fast food joints to scare the hell out of us, and I think it's been going on for a very long time.  How else to explain the ranks of psychopathic shills that have come to represent these fine establishments over the years?

Now, we all know that McDonald's has had a long history of having the second coming of John Wayne Gacy in an oversized onesie as their spokesman, and I suppose we've grown accustomed to that on some level.  (Still, whenever I see Ronald McDonald he reminds me of that needle-toothed clown from Stephen King's movie "It" ("We all flooooooat down here"), so I guess I'm not that accustomed to it.)  And Wendy's isn't much better, since the face of that franchise has been Pippy Longstocking meets "Children of the Corn" for as long as I can remember (which, granted, ain't that long).

But in the past couple of years, things seem to have gone to a whole other level.  And, for me, it all starts with Dairy Queen, unless you somehow think it's normal to have a big, disembodied mouth full of big, disembodied teeth pitching DQ's fine assortment of fried meats and frozen treats.  (I believe there might even be some lip-smackin' tongue action in there as well, which I guess was designed to show yumminess but was just a bit too much evil-and-good-cheer-chumminess for my taste, know what I mean?)  Let's just say I can practically envision a cutlass between those layers of pearly whites.  I'm thinking if the giant chattery teeth in that Stephen King story of the same name had a vocation, this would be it.  Just a-grinnin' and a-killin' (and a-supersizin') all the way to the drive-through window.

Or maybe, just maybe, those big DQ lips bring me back to the rubber retainer I had to wear for two years after getting my braces off.  Either way, just a-grinnin' and a-killin' (and a supersizin').  (Hey, wearing a HOCKEY PUCK in your mouth just does things to a kid, that's all I'm sayin'.)  At any rate, I find it really hard to concentrate on fast food happiness in the face of such nasty imagery.  (In fact, I think I had a bad dream about that big, scary mouth the first time I saw it, though it might've just been Bill O'Reilly on late night, an even bigger and scarier mouth....)

And speaking of a-grinnin' and a-killin', if it all begins with Dairy Queen, then it begins, ends and middles with big BK (notice the resemblance to BTK?).  'Cos personally, I don't think there's much that can compete with Burger King's, um, "Burger King" (clever, eh?) for sheer nightmare-inducing potential.  I find myself wondering (and not for the first time) what these marketing people could possibly have been thinking when they came up with this one.  Let's see:  If clowns aren't scary enough, let's put a vacant-eyed, shiny-faced DOLL with an Elizabethan fetish and a maniacal grin into the mix and break out a big ol' can o' whoopass in tights.  Yeah!  No.  Just...no.

I still haven't quite decided if the intent is to show us that the Burger King is a pervert, a homicidal maniac, or a perverted homicidal maniac.  I can't believe it matters at this point (since it's six of one, 6-to-12-with-a-sentence-recommendation for the other), but I guess we'll just have to wait and see.  In the meantime, just remember that it's all fun and games until someone gets a bloody finger in their fries courtesy of "The King". (Oh wait, someone already has.  Think they paid extra for that?)

So the question remains:  Are the purveyors of fast food deliberately trying to tap into all the creepy symbols of childhood zeitgeist, or are they merely clueless enough to think that these things are somehow, well, cute?  (You know, the way parents think it's "cute" to regale others with your most humiliating moments to anyone who'll listen from the time you're old enough to embarrass yourself to the time when you're too old to care (but still embarrassing yourself)?  Yeah, cute like that.  But enough about me.  Back to the fast food thing.)

I don't know if this is a trend designed to intimidate us into eating more food that's bad for us (but OH. SO. GOOD), or whether I've just been watching way too many horror movies (most of them seemingly either written by, directed by, or inspired by Stephen King).  Could be it's both.

But I do know this:  The evil is spreading to other genres.  That tattoo-wearing, mechanical bull-riding sock monkey in those Kia Sorento commercials is really starting to work my last nerve, he and his Entourage of Evil.  (What IS that tall one-eyed red thing with the carbuncles all over it, anyway??)  It could just be that there's something vaguely annoying about a bunch of battery-powered toys and stuffed animals with superior social lives to my own.  But there's also just something about that mack daddy monkey that reminds me of a Stephen King story about a wind-up toy just a-grinnin' and a-killin'....Oh, never mind.

I'm sure it's just a coincidence.

Edumacation Rock: Declaring Open Season on the English Language

Remember those “Schoolhouse Rock” animated vignettes they used to show during Afterschool Specials back in the day?  I'm thinking we need to bring those back, because between all the bad grammar, bad spelling and bad language out there, it's pretty obvious that something's gone terribly awry in the public discourse. 

Now, I can just hear the disgruntled voices out there, complaining about yet another verbal assault on the great unwashed by a self-proclaimed grammar Nazi.  However, that is not my intent.  I'm not talking about minor infractions of those arcane grammar rules known only to a select group.  Unarguably, there are certainly cases where proper grammar usage sounds, well, improper (not to mention stiff and pretentious):  When's the last time you heard someone refer to a single piece of “data” in the grammatically-correct-but-still-dumb-sounding “datum”?  Nor am I suggesting I'm immune to linguistic error.  In fact, I'm sure that my own humble blog postings have their share of dangling participles, split infinitives and run-on sentences.

Instead, what I'm addressing here are the basics, people!  Just look around you, and you'll see what I mean.  Even as the diet foods we buy at the supermarket have “less calories” (the inference apparently being that overeating makes you illiterate, too), we are restricted to “10 items or less” at the checkout counter.  People have “exercise regimes” (guess there's been a fitness coup) while foreign countries have “hostile regimens”.  My own personal favorite is from a recent news broadcast where the anchorman referenced the proposed “beautification” of Pope John Paul II.  (I'm pretty sure the guy meant to say “beatification”, but since he said it twice, you couldn't very well argue that he just misread the copy, now could you?)

We've all heard that expression “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me”.  I don't know that I've ever believed that, since I've always been more of a “pen is mightier than the sword” kind of gal.  However, I do know that  these butcheries of the English language truly pain me (and my sensitive ears).  

Everywhere you look these days you will see misspellings, bad sentence structure and the denuding of our collective vocabulary through the assignment of value judgments to mere words (more on that later).  For the most part, I blame technology, popular advertising, and the “Political Correctness" movement for the carnage.


CONJUNCTION JUNCTION, WHAT'S YOUR MALFUNCTION: 
THE INTERNET AS ANTICHRIST

Subtitles notwithstanding, I have nothing against the Internet, per se (after all, I'm here, aren't I?).   However, widespread use of the Internet (and its minions) as a communication medium has resulted in excessive use of acronyms and partial words to save typing time; frequent misspelling and bad grammar by its users; and over-reliance on the spell check tool to do our thinking for us.

In particular, the increased usage of online and electronic communication devices such as email, online message boards, and texting has spawned a shorthand language of its own.  With all the OMGing, ROFLing, IMOing, JKing, ITAing and TMIing, people hardly ever see full words anymore, never mind proper English.

I also think that the “spell check” tool is not helping matters any.  I'm sure that whomever invented spell check had the best of intentions.  However, even as the invention of the hand-held (and cheap) calculator seemed to make simple addition and subtraction skills a thing of the past, so too does the “spell check” function allow people to turn off the spelling button in their brains.  Instead, people rely on spell check as a crutch, which means they rarely bother to understand language.  As a result, you see words used that are

spelled correctly in a vacuum but which are completely incorrect when taken in context.  Hence, some of the most common examples of incorrect grammar and spelling that I've seen online (most of which are punctuated with some type of insult to a person's intelligence, age, race, gender or looks) include:

•  “your” versus “you're” (as in “your an idiot”);
• “woman” versus “women” (as in “your an idiot and for every women...”);
•  “its” versus “it's” (as in “your an idiot and every dog has it's day”);
•  "to” versus “too” (as in “is it to difficult to ask why your an idiot?"); and
•  “jibe” versus “jive” (as in “you're facts don't jive and your an idiot”).

Actually, come to think of it, I think it's just one individual making all these errors, but you can see what I mean....

Notwithstanding all of the above, however, technology is only one of the guilty parties in this terrible troika.  Equally to blame is the constant reinforcement of bad spelling and “lazy” grammar through advertising and, to a lesser extent, our reference books.

YOU SAY POTATOE, I SAY POTATO:  THE CODIFICATION OF SLANG, BAD GRAMMAR AND MISSPELLING

Instead of maintaining language standards, we have persistently “dumbed down” to the lowest common denominator in society, codifying slang while in effect throwing in the grammatical towel.  One of the worst offenders:  Advertisements.

Simply put, advertising is a scourge on the English language.  In fact, I would venture to say that for as long
as advertising has been around, there has been a consistent trend to use deliberate (or not) misspellings and fractured grammar to promote products and services.  Theories vary on whether advertisers are doing this in an effort to speak to the “common man” (by using “our” language) or whether they are just populated by marketing majors who wouldn't know a noun from an adverb.  As a result, I'm not sure whether to feel insulted or appalled (and yet strangely superior).    Either way, Madison Avenue has been laying waste to our collective IQs for a very long time.

I remember growing up to the tag line “Nobody doesn't like Sara Lee” (a truly tortured double negative) and liking Pillsbury frosting because it “[s]preads as good as it tastes”.  Today, the cable network TNT promises “More movies, less commercials”, while Outback restaurant encourages us to “live adventurous”.  (As an aside, how does eating at a chain restaurant constitute doing anything adventurous(ly), bad meals and e.coli notwithstanding?)

And it doesn't end there.  The list of “cleverly” misspelled brand names is seemingly endless:  Acuvue Oasys contact lenses. Bonz dog biscuits.  Star-kist tuna.  Froot Loops cereal.  Reddi-wip whipped cream (two for the price of one!).  Is it any wonder none of us knows how to spell?  

It must be really frustrating being an English teacher these days. What chance does an English grammar textbook have against the steady bombardment of advertising slogans (which, after all, are designed to be memorably catchy)?

Meanwhile, each year the dictionary, which used to set the lexicon bar for us, has populated itself with slang words and phrases such as “yutz”, “wuss”, “google”, “soul patch” (don't ask, don't tell), “bling”, and “unibrow” (the synonym of which presumably would be “monobrow”).  Even “ain't”, a word which through the decades had been so reviled by the linguistic cognoscenti that it even had its own song of terror and woe, has been officially accepted into the dictionary (though, to my knowledge, nobody fell in a bucket of paint as a result).

All that being said, the dictionary does still have some standards.  As far as I know, former Vice President Dan Quayle's notorious misspelling of the word “potato” as “potatoe” (evidently referring to the little-known three-toed variety of spud) has yet to be embraced in print.  But give it time.

In all seriousness, when slang words become part of the dictionary, they not only “dumb down” our language; they also dilute whatever value these words may have once had as “out-of-the-box” expression.

 
I'M OK, BUT YOU'RE NOT (OK)

Adding slang terms to the dictionary is a case of common usage dictating grammatical standards, but the so-called “political correctness” movement (or “PC”, for you acronym junkies) is an example of social standards dictating actual usage.  Every year, just as poor erstwhile planet Pluto was banned from our solar

system and therefore our social consciousness as a “non-planet”, words that we've all come to know over the years have been virtually excised from our word-stock (at least in certain contexts).  “Used” is now “pre-owned”.  “Short” is now "petite" or “vertically challenged”.  “Fat” is now “curvy” or “real woman” (as I guess those of us who aren't “curvy” are considered mannequins (or is it “personquins” these days?)).  Not to be outdone, “hoarders” are being referred to as “over-treasurers” in some circles (of hell).

Everywhere, words that describe someone or something too directly are now verboten, destined to wither on the vocabulary vine, leaving us with not only fewer options but an imprecise terminology.  But what's the point?  You can try to police what people say (to some extent), but you'll never police the way people think entirely.  That's the way it works and that's the way it's always been.

After all, there was a time (and not that long ago) when terms like “moron”, “imbecile” and “idiot” were used as scientific terms to identify categories of lower intelligence.  It's only when people started using those terms outside of their original scope that the terms were deemed offensive or otherwise insulting (in short, words by themselves don't hurt people, people hurt people).  However, once you've established the precedent of assigning value judgments to ordinary words, it's just a matter of time before the new politically correct terms suffer the same fate.  (And, human nature being what it is (and what it is always seems to be something bad), they will.)

To some extent, I think the “PC” movement is also related to the “I'm ok, you're ok” and “we're all winners” era that ushered in the idea that we're all special and we're all good and talented in our own way.  Most of all, no matter how much we may stink at something, no one will ever tell us so.   

That being said, if someone were to tell us so, I'm sure it would look something like this:  Your spelling and grammar stink (and your an idiot).  JK LOL.  

Photo credits:

"Googe" screenshot of Google's homepage from February 14, 2007.  Photo used by permission and license of aetherworld.

"Potatoe Rama" sign.  Photo used by permission and license of lindsayloveshermac.

"Likker Store Open" sign.  Photo used by permission and license of quinn.anya

Footprints

I'm going to miss winter when it's over.

I know that's an unpopular opinion, especially in those areas of the country that get a lot of cold and snow. Oh, I won't miss the shoveling (mostly because my husband does it!), and I definitely won't miss the dicey driving on slick roads.

But there's something about wintertime that encourages introspection. The books we read are longer and meatier than what we tote to the beach. Our meals are warmer and heartier than the lighter fare of summer. Even the frigid waters of the ocean have a clarity unobstructed by the overheated crush of humanity in the warmer months. Because we spend more time inside, it's almost as if we're in a semi-hibernation mode. With fewer outside distractions, we turn in upon ourselves and delve down into our very essence, what makes us "us".

A couple of weeks ago, I was looking out the windows of my house at the white and frozen tundra that is the northeast in February. Despite the apparent stillness, hundreds of animal tracks dotted the landscape: three-toed bird prints on my front step; bounding piles of snow in a frantic pattern that can only have come from happy dogs in love with the here and now; the mincing, delicate pawprints of cats. In my sideyard was a steady stream of deer hoofprints showing the curious trek that took them over the fence and through the now-dormant garden. Some of the deer tracks even led right up to (and apparently inside) my open garage door. The crazy criss-cross of tracks was a snapshot of all the different creatures going about their daily business while I, unknowing, was inside and going about my own.

People often refer to this time of year as the "dead of winter". But everywhere I look, there is evidence to the contrary, captured in the winter snow.

I'm going to miss winter when it's over (at least until the first good beach day).

Photo used by permission and license of beautifulcataya.