Worst-Case Scenario

Consider the following exchange:

Tom: The forecast calls for rain this afternoon; do you still want to go to the baseball game?
Bob: I think so. Worst-case scenario: we get a little wet and we have to leave early.

How many times have you heard something like this? Worst-case scenario: we stop for dinner at Taco Bell. Worst-case scenario: you get a little rash. Worst-case scenario: I stay an extra hour at work.

The fact is that most of these supposed worst-case scenarios represent a serious lack of imagination. If the worst possible outcome that you can imagine for some event is that it rains at a baseball game, then you certainly have a rosy worldview. [You would also make a pretty lousy science-fiction writer].

So next time you are tempted to make a 'worst-case scenario' claim, consider the following:

• Am I being chased by killer bees?
• Did I forget to put on deodorant this morning?
• Follow up question: can I smell myself?
  
• Am I watching Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen?
• Has a sink-hole opened up, swallowing the entire city?
• Have my fingers fused together to form a sort of 'hand-paddle'?
• Am I experiencing disorienting vertigo?
• Is there no joy left in my life?
• Are my socks wet?
• Has the earth been subjugated by a cruel race of telekinetic aliens?

If you answered 'no' to any of those questions, then I would posit that you are not actually talking about a 'worst-case scenario.'

Now, there may be some kill-joys out there who complain and say, "Joel, when we say 'worst-case scenario' we don't mean the worst of all possible outcomes, just the worse of two outcomes, one favorable, one unfavorable (for example: rain at the baseball game, or no rain at the baseball game)." To them I respond: Not my problem. This is still not a worst-case scenario.

Questions for Discussion:

1. What is the ultimate worst-case scenario?
2. What is worse, a sink-hole or a tsunami?
3. Or an alien invasion?

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Some Good Names for a Frozen Pizza Brand:

Pizzini's
Tostoti's - (pronounced, toast-oh-tees)
Baldini's
Luigino's
Saucers
Crustacelli
Lil' Tastees
Cheeze-slingers - (a brand of miniature frozen pizzas, meant to appeal to tweens) - (Could also be a form of frozen grilled cheese sandwich with the crust removed)

Questions for Discussion:

1. What is your favorite brand of frozen pizza? (I am a Freschetta man).
2. If you were in charge of marketing at a frozen food company, what would you name a new line of pizzas?
3. Are you concerned that most of the pizza names sound Italian? Is this racism? What if we called one of them "Javier Hernandez Pizza" or "Olaf Angstrom's Pizza", would that help?
   

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"Good Catch"

Here is a list of compliments that I frequently get, from the least common to the most common.

1. "You are tall." I choose to take this as a compliment.
   
2. "Those glasses make you look smart." Note the subtle difference between the use of 'smart' versus 'smarter.'
3. "Good catch!"

I would say that my most widely regarded and appreciated talent is my ability to catch things that seem uncatchable. A few recent examples:

Last week, to celebrate Rochelle's successful dissertation defense, we went out to dinner to celebrate. As we were moving salad bowls around, trying to accommodate the main courses, my fork was pushed to the edge of the table and then...over the edge. The waitress gasped and turned her head. Rochelle grimaced in anticipation of the awful din of silverware on tile. I didn't have time to think - that fork was on its way to the ground (and accelerating at a rate of 9.8 m/s/s) - so I lunged to the side, stretched out my hand, and felt the cold metal tines of the fork (slick with balsamic vinaigrette) land gently on my palm.

"Nice catch," the waitress said. I didn't say anything (I save my self-aggrandizing for this e-blog), but I knew she was right. It was a nice catch!

Earlier in that same week, while in the break room at work, I caught a woman's bagel (already sliced and cream cheesed) when she knocked it off the table in her rush to answer her cell phone. "Good catch," she told me. I'm not sure if she ate the bagel, but she totally could have. I got it by the non-cream-cheese side, so there weren't even any finger marks.

I caught a guy's iPhone when he dropped it in the stairwell. He was on the steps higher than me, talking on the phone with his arms full, when the phone slipped out from under his chin, bounced off the rail, and landed safely in my hands on the lower tier of the steps. (See my representation of that event below)

Unfortunately, this talent hasn't translated to any special athletic prowess. I played baseball for a few years, but I was always a bit timid about getting under the high fly balls. I think this is due to the peculiar nature of my talent. I don't catch everything; my talent manifests itself in the only the most extreme circumstances - circumstances in which all hope for the falling object has been lost.

Anyway, there it is, my most remarkable talent. My second most remarkable talent is how clean my plate is after I eat. Seriously, it looks like it hasn't been used. I don't know how I do it.

Questions for Discussion:

1. Which of your talents elicits the most comments from your friends and associates?
2. Can you derive a concept for a superhero from your talent?
3. Anyone want to challenge me to a drop-and-catch competition?
   

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Review: Sophie's World

Sophie's World, by Jostein Gaarder is a novel about the history of philosophy. The first half of the novel deals with a young Norwegian girl named Sophie who begins receiving mysterious letters from an unknown sender. These letters constitute what is essentially a correspondence course in the history of philosophy. Beginning with the Pre-Socratics, such as Anaximander, Empedocles, and (everyone's favorite) Democritus, Sophie's mysterious teacher takes her through the history of western philosophy.

The second half of the novel takes a very strange turn, as Sophie and her teacher realize that they are characters in a novel and set out on a course to escape from their fictional world. Meanwhile, the novel's author begins to wonder if he too, isn't the product of some other author's imagination. By the end, it is a massive meta-fictional jumble of Disney characters and pixies and magic geese (sadly, this is not a joke). Despite this rather insane turn of events, I still enjoyed the novel.

In truth, I often found myself skimming over the 'novelish' parts of the novel because, frankly, they weren't that great. Perhaps it was a translation issue (which I doubt), but the story parts of the novel were pretty dull. I kept slogging through the 500+ pages of this novel, though because I so thoroughly enjoyed the philosophical sketches presented by Sophie's teacher. Most of the major philosophers in history were discussed: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Descartes, Hume, Locke, Spinoza, Kant, Berkeley, Kierkegaard, etc. The only really notable absence was Leibniz. The philosophical systems of these individuals were presented in a very accessible way. Gains in accessibility are often made by sacrificing accuracy. In some cases - the chapter on Kant, for example - the novel misses some fairly major points. For the most part, however, Sophie's World does a commendable job of presenting the philosophical systems with a decent degree of accuracy.

I am giving this novel a rather inflated grade, I admit. But for someone interested in reviewing the history of western thought, or someone learning about the history of philosophy for the first time, Sophie's World is a pretty good place to start.

Grade: 4/5

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Dr. & Mr. Mikkelsen

Rochelle successfully defended her dissertation yesterday, meaning that she is now Dr. Mikkelsen!

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NaNoWriMo...

...short for National Novel Writing Month, begins on November 1st. The goal is to complete a draft of a 50,000 word novel before December 1st. Participants can register (for free) online at the website: http://www.nanowrimo.org/. While signing up online is strictly optional, the website has some useful tools and resources for calculating your progress and staying on schedule. It also has some useful information for first-time writers (how to deal with characters, dialog, plot, etc.)

I have been working on a novel for a while, albeit in a rather self-defeating way. 150 pages in, I didn't like the way the plot was going, so I had to scrap most of it and restart. 175 pages into the re-write, I decided to change the main character and switch to a 3rd person point of view. So, now, on the 3rd re-write, I am only about 30 pages in. This means I have been keeping ~1 page for every 10 pages written. Now that the novel is (hopefully) headed in the right direction, I am looking forward to participating in NaNoWriMo in order to make some serious progress. 50,000 words might not finish the project for me, but it should put me in range of being done.

If any of the readers of this e-blog are interested in participating, let me know. I'll be posting periodic updates of my progress.

Questions for Discussion:

1. Have you ever participated in NaNoWriMo in the past?
2. If you were going to write a novel, what would the title be?
3. Can you think of any acronym that is worse than 'NaNoWriMo'?

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Chrome

I used the Chrome beta for a while. Then went back to Firefox. Use Safari on the Mac at work. Now, back to Chrome.

Of the three browsers, Chrome definitely looks the best - and the hybrid navigation/search bar is a handy feature. Firefox has been my main browser for so many years, though...it's hard to leave it behind.

So, what browser do you use?

poll by twiigs.com

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Book Review: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
After thumbing through the pages of this book, I was almost certain that I was not going to like it. There were pages that contained a single sentence each. There were pictures of doorknobs and birds interspersed throughout. Lines of dialog were not granted their own lines, but were instead crammed together in jumbled masses of text. There were pages where words were printed over words, so that the entire page was unreadable. In short, it looked gimmicky, and I supposed that the gimmickry was the only thing the novel had to offer. Nevertheless, as the book came highly recommended, I decided to give it a shot.

And I'm glad I did. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is one of the best books I have read in a long time. It was gimmicky - there's no denying it - but it was also a wonderful story that walked the precarious line between hilarity and heartbreak. The gimmicks could have been completely cut and the novel would not have suffered one bit. Take away the pictures, punctuate like a normal author, and the book would have been every bit as good (maybe even better as it would have contained less distraction).

The main character, an eight-year-old boy named Oscar, is suffering from anxiety and depression following the attacks on the World Trade Center, which claimed his father's life. When he discovers a key in his dad's things, he sets out to find the lock that the key opens, assuming that this key is a part of one of the elaborate scavenger hunts that his father used to orchestrate. During his quest, he enlists the help of the strangers he encounters, who seem to see Oscar's quest as a chance for them to move past their own sorrows and regrets.

So, after basically gushing for three paragraphs, I'll get around to business. What do I like about this novel? Oscar is a great point-of-view character. It's easy for a book told from a child's perspective to become obnoxiously cute; this book escapes that danger. Oscar is intelligent and observant enough to be an interesting narrator. He notices the subtleties of the adult world but doesn't have the experience to make sense of them. This creates a tension that is reliably played on for laughs and for emotional weight.

The plot moves along quickly, and even though you always get the sense that Oscar isn't going to find what he's looking for - or rather, that the thing he finds isn't what he thinks it will be - there was enough going on to keep me flying through the pages.

What did I dislike about this book? Not a whole lot, but there were some things which I wasn't wild about. First, the 'gimmicks.' They didn't ruin the book or anything, but they just struck me as being too trendy for a book that was otherwise very good. Sort of like getting a Guns 'n' Roses tattoo - it might seem like a good idea at the time, but it will age quickly. There will be a time fairly soon (I imagine) when the odd type-setting, etc. will look very dated and out-of-place.

Also, there is a subplot (which I won't discuss to avoid spoilers) involving two individuals who survive the bombing of Dresden, Germany in World War II. While I am sure that the bombing was a horrific event for anyone who survived it, the characters' response struck me as rather over-the-top and melodramatic. It isn't completely unbelievable, but it was a bit of a strain.

Overall, I highly recommend this book.

View all my reviews >>

Questions for Discussion:

1. Have you ever read this book?
2. What is the funniest book you have ever read?
3. What is the saddest?
4. What is the longest book you've read?

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Mixed Metaphors About Television

The fall television series is well underway. While there are a few notable series that have not started up yet, I don't think it's too early to give you my thoughts on which shows are on the fence, making the grade, and getting dumped (I told you there would be mixed metaphors!)

Making the Grade:

1. The Office - So far, this season has been very good. The second episode wasn't my all-time favorite, but the following episode (the one with the wedding) totally made up for it. Fans of The Office have been looking forward to this weeding for nearly as long as Jim (and longer than Pam)!
2. Parks and Recreation - The first season was decent, but the current season has been hilarious. It took a little while for the writers to get the feel for the characters, but now that Leslie is less pathetic and the supporting characters are more fully realized (like the womanizing Tom and the tough-guy boss Ron Swansen), the show has new legs. None of the shows on my list has boosted its stock more in this season than Parks and Recreation, which has jumped from a 'probably not going to watch' to a 'high-five!'
3. Fringe - I liked this show from the start, and it keeps getting better. For fans of X-Files, Lost, and other sci-fi/slip-stream television programs, you could do much worse than Fringe. Leonard Nimoy boosts the geek credentials with his role as the mysterious arch-scientist William Bell.
4. How I Met Your Mother - Three episodes down, and this season is looking as good as its predecessors. Ted is still ostensibly the main character, but it is Neil Patrick Harris' character, Barney, who steals the show every time. It's going to be legend - wait for it - dary!
5. Glee - It is completely over-the-top, slightly reminiscent of a Mexican telenovela, and extremely fun. The scene where the football team dances on the field literally me grimace, until I smiled, until I laughed. Who knows if they'll be able to keep this up, season after season, but for now, it's making the grade.
   

On The Fence:

1. Community - Chevy Chase has not had much success since his successful days (you know, back when he had all the success...before he stopped having so much success?) and he doesn't seem to be breaking the jinx with Community. A good premise and a few hilarious early moments haven't been sustained in subsequent episodes. I'll give it a few more chances to prove itself, but the message for Community: get your ducks in a row or you ship has sailed and you are going overboard (mixed metaphor: check!).

Getting Dumped:

1. Flash-Forward - It started with a cool premise and a very good pilot episode, but things have fizzled out fast. The dialogue is mostly expository and obvious - "We saw the future for 2 minutes and 17 seconds," and "Can we change the future, or are we fated to live the things we saw in our visions?" Compounding the problems with the show is the unexpected lying that the main characters do simply for the sake of enhancing the drama of the show. For example, the main character, a recovering alcoholic, sees that he is drinking from a flask in his flash-forward. His wife has told him that if he relapses, she will divorce him. When she tells him that in her flash-forward she was in a relationship with another man, her husband freaks out and can't imagine why she would betray him...even though he literally told us exactly why she would leave him, not 5 minutes before. Ugh!
2. House - This was always a stand-by show for me, but I think I'm done with it. As it turns out, there is one interesting character in the show: Dr. House. So far, he has been in rehab, a mental hospital (as a patient), and he has quit his job as a doctor. No thanks. Note to the show: don't take the only thing that is interesting about your show and change it to something less interesting. CASE CLOSED!
3. Hank - It took 5 minutes to convince me that this was not a funny show. The remaining 17 minutes of the episode were just confirmation of the show's mediocrity. I'll pass on this one.

What TV shows are you watching? Did I get it wrong on any of my reviews? Confused by the mixed metaphors?

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Book Review: Ahab's Wife

Grade: 3.5/5

Not long ago, I finished reading Ahab's Wife, by Sena Jeter Naslund. The recent success of books like Ahab's Wife, Wind Done Gone, March, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, etc. suggests a new route to a best-seller: take a great and beloved novel, and retell it from the point of view of one of the novel's secondary or peripheral characters. In the case of Ahab's Wife, that peripheral character is...(smack yourself if you don't guess this correctly)...Ahab's wife, who is left behind in Nantucket while her husband blusters around the ocean in pursuit of Moby Dick.

The story follows Una Spenser for several years, beginning with her home in Kentucky, her years spent living at a lighthouse, her world explorations as she joins the crew of a whaling ship, her various romances and heartbreaks, etc. The story follows her for several years after the end of Moby Dick, as she responds to Ahab's [SPOILER ALERT!] death and is again faced with the daunting task of picking up the pieces of her life.

The book is at its very best during the times when it overlaps with events and characters described in Moby Dick. Our familiarity with the events of that story creates a unique sort of suspense - even though I knew exactly what was going to happen, I was compelled to keep reading for the sake of the characters, who didn't yet know about the demise of The Pequod at sea.

The main character of the story, Una, sometimes felt a little contrived to me. To understand what she is like, take a 21st century college graduate with a degree in comparative literature and transport her back to the early 1800s and enjoy watching how much better she is than her contemporaries. She's into new age spirituality, despises racism and traditional gender roles, makes tons of money but never forgets her roots, etc. and so on. In short, she's the perfect Oprah guest. To me, she only really made sense as a foil for Ahab. She was defined by the things that Ahab was not. Ahab was defiant of his fate; Una rolls with the punches. Ahab was obsessed with revenge; Una bears a casual interest in everything, but has no obsessions. Ahab deifies himself; Una loves looking at the stars because they make her feel small (or whatever). Despite the fact that she is a total anachronism, Una is still an interesting and compelling main character, if not an entirely believable one.

The novel is extremely well-written. Naslund has a real ear for putting together a sentence (a faculty that I have not demonstrated in the construction of this sentence). However, her strength occasionally proves to be her downfall. There are moments in the book where Naslund gets so carried away with her ability to make up adjectives and turn nouns into verbs, that she seems to overlook the fact that the things she is saying are either 1) hopelessly trite or 2) nonsensical.
Example:

Moonless, the sky was an utter darkness (as was the sea, which met it seamlessly), strewn with stars, as was the sea occasionally, when the swell of some wave before me would bulge up to reflect briefly the light of some star behind me, before rolling it under the water. Can the sea thus swallow even the stars? (emphasis added).

If this question is posed literally, the answer is: no. The sea cannot swallow the stars. Even the smallest stars are larger than our entire planet. If the question is posed figuratively, then I suppose we could answer: if by 'swallow' you mean 'reflect' and by 'stars' you mean 'light from the star's, then yes. If the question is posed metaphorically, the answer is: what are you talking about? This is a minor example - the first one I found while flipping through the pages - but this sort of thinking is ubiquitous in Ahab's Wife and I find it slightly grating. There are entire passages in the book which sound great until you try to actually apply your brain to them, at which point it becomes clear that this is more of an exercise in hypnotism than in deep thinking. Not all novels have to be deep, but I found the bulk of Una's philosophical ruminations to be superficial (at best) or mere exercises in verbosity (at worst).

I recommend this book with the following caveats:

1. Be willing to skim when the thinking gets muddled.
2. Be familiar with Moby Dick (Sparknotes are fine, but you should know the basic characters, themes, and plot).

Have you read this book? What did you think of it? Am I way off?

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