Category Archives: Social comment

Editing/writing life, Homeownership, Social comment

The fine art of being a great customer: enlightened self-interest

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If you want a tl:dr, scroll to the bottom.

This wasn’t inspired by my editorial work, but by life as an American consumer. That doesn’t mean it can’t apply, but it does mean it isn’t written from my vendor perspective. It stems from my time on the other, paying side.

Most of us 1970s kids were raised with a great falsehood. Some of us still believe it a factual selling principle in spite of all evidence to the contrary:

The customer is always right.

No. They’re not. They can’t be. The very statement is obvious baloney. The act of making it is a red flag big enough to sell to China.

In fact, some customers are stupid and wrong, and they are rarely if ever right. Nearly every customer who tries to quote that fiction is either harboring a delusion or using it as a club to beat the vendor into submission. A fair restatement from a vendor perspective would be:

The customer is right as often as we can arrange for them to be without giving away the store.

Until we accept that reality, we begin from a place of unrealism. It’s not that all vendors always do the right thing. Some never do, and some are outright criminals, but let’s at least assume that most vendors adopt a public perspective of enlightened self-interest. While they do want business, they don’t want to make enemies in the process because that’s bad business. (Ask Ziply Fiber.)

It follows that they’d like to keep good customers happy: those who pay on time, treat them decently, appreciate good things, and don’t raise hell over trivial stuff. Some more entitled vendors might add a few clauses designed only for their benefit, and most of those vendors have a problem.

Your call is not important to us anymore, and how I know

Be a bad enough customer long enough, and they stop trying to please you in hope that you will just stop calling. (There are other ways of dealing with this. I know an attorney who charges what he calls the “asshole tax.”) Habitually bad customers have alienated everyone within reach, and might have no other choice. They’re the people who called the nurse a stupid bitch one time, but are now stuck with her in the ER and she has to treat them even if she still quite rightly resents that insult. As a pro, she will do what is needed and correct, but there’s more she might do if she felt motivated.

I know these things because I have worked in sales, and I also used to be a bad customer. I was raised to imitate many bad things, including a horrible sense of snobbish pretension. I was raised by observing what I later realized were serious Karen stereotypes. Once I hit my thirties I realized that this was misguided and selfish–and highly counterproductive.

The mental workings I had used to justify this to myself were that I never wanted to be deprived of the slightest bit of fair value. The world was a damn ripoff and by God, I wasn’t taking it in silence. I didn’t get what I wanted? I demanded some form of compensation. I had to wait too long? Same. Suck service? I’d learn them with a dime tip.

On some level I was right in some of those cases, at least from a purely pecuniary tactical standpoint. From a strategic standpoint I was losing the war over pennies and nickels. I had to learn the principle of enlightened self-interest. I had to realize that, as Venita van Caspel taught us back in the day, that I should look at what something or some situation paid me rather than what it cost me.

Okay, I was an ass. Now what?

I changed. I never again sent back an entrée, stopped talking to managers about bad food or service. If I didn’t like the service at a restaurant, I still didn’t tip; I just paid my bill and never went back. Ever, ever. Why would I want to help people doing bad business? Go on BegsDoor (a place that will help you understand how this country got into the state it’s in) and you’ll see armies of people saying “you should tell the manager about it.” Why have a negative interaction when I’m already not very happy and never coming back? Faaaa. I’ve already accepted that I got poor value, and it’s the management’s job to prevent that, so I assume they are doing their jobs and approve of this. Let them manage their outfit without free consulting from me.

Pay without a word, then leave. Not my problem. Feedback is for valued vendors.

Obviously, I still believe in fair value. My view of fair value expanded. My psychological state also has value, and I’m not going to screw it up because the restaurant charges premium pricing for cheap ingredients. I’ll go do something more enjoyable.

It’s not too smart to let past negatives screw up your present (that’s how old people become grumpy old people), so I tried my best to start each new relationship with a positive and open-minded outlook. Without that, it’s pretty hard to lay the groundwork for what  might become a great relationship. Where it went from there was up to the vendor.

It started to work. Having removed myself from the problem side of the equation, I gained better outcomes. I stopped re-using bad vendors–but if the vendor did fine, I would treat them right. I might dicker a bit over a price, especially where they expected it, but if I got a discount then I considered I had a higher duty to them. They wanted to charge me less? Great; I would make sure they weren’t sorry they’d given me a good deal. If I sensed that the discount might cost me more than it saved me, I would not ask. Some discounts are not good discounts.

There is a concept in Theodism (a branch of Germanic heathenism which I respect, though I’m not a member) called “right good will.” Simply put, it means that you treat your friend, sibling, etc. better than expected. The idea is that you don’t have to watch your value equation because they’re watching yours. They are fine with doing that because you are watching theirs.

This also influenced me. It reminds me to see the world through other eyes. What would make the vendor delighted to hear from me? If I value that vendor, I ask myself that question.

For example…

The dividends the overall approach has paid are lasting and warming. Let’s take the best of the local Mexican restaurants here (which sadly isn’t saying a lot). Most of their waitresses don’t speak a lot of English. I speak just enough Spanish to empathize, and have lived my entire life in the American West. Hispanic culture is a part of our region’s heritage. Experience with the language and culture showed me that in Spanish-speaking cultures, to speak badly can be embarrassing. I noticed this because the staff members were always praising my truly awful Spanish, and I came to understand the unspoken message: I am a courteous person who will not humiliate you.

Well, I wouldn’t be embarrassed, but I see what you’re doing. Muchas gracias, Señorita.

I adopted that rather civilized outlook as my own (at least in those restaurants; definitely not when editing, where I simply have to tell the client the truth). It’s certainly more civilized than bullying a newcomer who is doing her best, as a percentage of people would earn my contempt by doing. So when the waitress spoke to me, I would say something nice about her accent, or how well she spoke. Every time I did so, I watched the tension drain from the server’s features. She understood that this (heavy-bearded, old, male) Anglo at least would not snarl at her or humiliate her.

It was easy to leave good tips, considering the great service I received. I had done nearly nothing to deserve this but fib a little. How is that anything but an amazing deal? Best value ever: better experience almost for free, and walking out happy. Word will get around. Come back any time soon, and notice a special respect in some folks’ tones, eyes. Nice way to start off a dinner date with my wife!

There are times not to dicker even if you could. An example is my favorite sports card vendor. We met for the first time in a parking lot, and I looked over the vintage cards he had priced for me. The price was very fair, so instead of dickering, I pulled out my checkbook and paid what he asked. This was the beginning of over a decade of business, with the deals getting better and better over time. If I couldn’t afford it, I’d tell him so rather than ask him to lower the price. He might offer to do that on his own. The value was always there; it was just a question of what I could afford to spend on old cards.

We became friends, and we’re still doing card business. I’ve even sold him some, which brought the flip side into play. I tried to base the price on what he would consider a great deal, but wasn’t sure about what that might be. I had to push him, however politely, and finally said the magic words: “Look. This is the best chance I’ve had to treat you as well as you treat me. You’re offering me $150 and I think it’s too much. Would you consider $125 an awesome deal?” He admitted he would. “Then not a penny more,” I said, enjoying the whole transaction. $25 to do right by someone who has asked thousands of dollars less than he could have over the years? Barely even registers. I hope I get to do him a great deal again sometime.

When a bad vendor screws up–as, being bad vendors, they customarily do–they’re going to be off the list anyway. When a good one screws up, that’s when you really cement the relationship. In a previous city of residence, I had an auto mechanic relationship so excellent that I’ve been tempted to take my vehicle back there for service, three and a half hours away. Well, one day they gave my name out to AAA without asking me, and I got an inquiry/questionnaire about them. Now, I don’t cotton one bit to having my information sprayed about without my advance consent, and I am often inclined to be very vindictive about that, but this was the best shop in town. When my battery was toast and I needed a jump, they sent a guy out to do it so I could drive to their shop. Is that not awesome? Who burns a vendor relationship like that? More plainly spoken, who is so shortsighted, childish, and stupid as to do so?

So rather than pitch a fit, I sat down with one of the managers I’d seen mature over fifteen years. I explained why I had a big problem with the info sharing. He explained that they were shooting for AAA certification of some sort, and that it would help their business a lot. “I get it,” I said. “Normally I’d be pretty pissed, but I respect you guys a lot. Please don’t do that again, but I won’t say anything rough on the survey. Fair?” He was relieved and appreciative. Relationship preserved, message received.

In 2024 I had spinal cord surgery for a condition that would otherwise have killed me, with debilitating pain ultimately destined for quadriplegia and death. I woke up in the ICU and was able to move my hands, and I felt better than I had in six months. I’d never before spent the night in a hospital, and my self-adopted daughter and some very good friends are nurses. The worst possible thing I could do was be at my worst, and it would be real smart to be at my best instead. The night shift nurse was kind and did some small thing to make me more comfortable. When I said “Thank you, Nurse,” she told me I was welcome to call her by her first name. “I appreciate that,” I replied through the medical fog, “but I’m pretty sure you worked very hard to become an RN. You earned that title.” She was surprised but not at all displeased. Nurses don’t get a tenth the respect they deserve. Try it.

Word gets around. The morning nurse got the same treatment, and asked if I needed anything. I asked was there any chance I could get a good cup of strong non-cafeteria coffee? “No problem,” she said. She kept checking back and ended up bringing me four cups of the good stuff before finally suggesting this might be a good time to switch to tea. I smiled, laughed, and went along. I wasn’t very needy and stayed off the call button. When they had to perform tests, even when I wasn’t much in the mood, I went along without giving them any guff. They have more than one patient and the give part of the give-and-take is to refrain from grousing about when they get their periodic duties done. You help them, they help you.

I was home about 48 hours after they stitched up my neck and detubated me (that should be a word). Coincidence? I suspect that 25ish me would have ended up in rehab rather than just going home. He would have made their lives harder, giving them zero reason to make his easier. Better philosophy = happier outcome.

One year my wife and I were at a pretty nice restaurant for our anniversary. The kitchen botched up our order, and started in on a party of 25 immediately after. The waiter had the unfortunate job of breaking the news to me. “It’s all right,” I said. “We live by a simple principle. Want to know what it is?” He nodded, actually near tears; he knew it was our anniversary. I motioned him closer and lowered my voice below the din of a busy dining room. “It’s easy. Don’t be assholes in the restaurant. No one’s trying to make your day worse. Stuff goes wrong. I know you’ll take care of us. In the meantime, I’m here with my best friend.” Down came the tears, but he also laughed. He got the great tip he deserved, and we got free desserts.

Guess how many times that’s happened over the years? It’s simple enough: Just be someone they’d like to make happy, rather than someone they hope never returns. I’ve lived both ways and the first is far more pleasant.

Believe it or not, part of it is knowing when to at least try to refuse taking something for free. A good vendor who has a bad day will often offer you too good a deal, such as not charging you for this or that. If you have the ability to calculate a good deal for you, you have the ability to calculate too good a deal. If this is a vendor you want to keep around and make you a priority, you have two options. One would be to simply make the payment for more, but that has an element of forcing a kindness on someone. More tactful, and likely to be declined but very much respected, is the rejoinder to her: “Hey, I really appreciate that, and it says a lot about your principles. $X – 30% is too much, though. You still did in the end come through; it just went a little sideways, and we all have rough days. You still need to make a living. I think you should split the difference with me at $X – 15%.”

As Molly Ivins might say today, you could then knock her over with Pete Hegseth’s bourbon brain. She’ll probably decline, which is all right; you made an honest effort and she knows it. Even if she accepts–and it’s good to push a bit–you still got a very good deal. Either way, she’s not going to forget you soon. Not only were you kind to her on a lousy day, but you tried hard to make sure it was still a decent deal for her. Put another way, you did your best to be great business for her. She’d like to do more in the future. If it’s between you and some mean old bastard (the kind forever and ironically leaning into the “honored citizen” stuff, reaming grocery checkers for carding them for alcohol) who hammers her on price and then complains about any tiny detail, who’s getting taken care of? Who’s better business?

It works this way in many situations. It earns ridiculous benefits: servicing priority, better pricing, quality work. The objective is to be someone they do not want to lose.

I’m not saying that your whole purpose for business is to kiss your vendors’ asses. Every day my browser opens up with a news aggregation of listicles telling us all the things we should do to make it easier for people. TSA agents, flight attendants, truck drivers, etc., etc. It’s too much, and unless you are a professional altruist or have no self-respect, at some point it’s natural to ask yourself if your counterparts are planning to make any extra effort on our behalf–you know, out of fairness. Otherwise it’s basically: Let me get this straight. My primary concern should be making your day easier. It’s unlikely you plan to show much appreciation. I should invest half my energy in your concerns with what motivation?

A few small asks, that’s fine. Asks that make sense anyway, that’s fine. Have no goal but to kiss your ass? That’s not fine. I think maybe I’ll fall back on treating you the way you treat me. You care about me, I care about you. You show you don’t care about me, fine; you entitle me to feel the same.

I fail to see what’s wrong with that–either way.

So no, it’s not about being everyone’s buddy, nor about restructuring my whole way of life to the Suckup Model. I don’t reward bad business, and if truly screwed, my rages are legendary and my memory eternal. I’m still pissed off at those movers from Boise. There’s an orthopedic surgeon in eastern Washington I came close to decking. I refuse to use self-checkout and that now keeps me away from Blowe’s and Home Despot. I’ve boycotted American Airlines for forty years. I quit donating to every Catholic charity when they poured several mill into manipulating elections in my home state. Every. Single. One.

In other words, none of this is me cosplaying Barney. I don’t turn the other cheek. It is enlightened self-interest; I want good outcomes and I have figured out how to maximize the chances. I also care about pleasant interactions and relationships, and I have found a way to have those and the good outcomes. The bad ones can stay on my bad side and out of my way. I will reward the good ones emotionally and financially.

If I don’t give them a chance to be likeable and good to me, that’s on me. It isn’t always possible. In some situations I’ve learned that I need to put up an automatic emotional wall, especially with car dealerships. The more they go on about how they’re an “alternative,” “no bull/no dicker,” “believe in nice,” the more certain you can be that you’ll gain nothing from trying to develop harmony. They are sure to do something you despise because that’s their identity, but you need a car. So treat it like dealing with a fairly dumb bureaucrat who has the power to hose you; maintain your composure; and sidestep all efforts to “establish rapport” and “overcome objections.” Bargain as though it’s life or death, without remorse or emotion, and plan to walk away the first time.

Don’t answer questions that are none of their fucking business, but don’t say it that way; just move past the rude question. (I’ve actually had a car salesman insist on an answer to some personal question, and then get mad at me because I told him that wasn’t pertinent. Guess how many people I’ve told about that place, with its whole “we’re the nice people” schtick. Not that I’d ever dime out Wilsonville Toyota, nor in any way imply that they behaved this way. Of course not. They just randomly came to mind.)

Kindness and good relationships are for those where it will matter. If you’re forced to deal with basic evil, you are at complete liberty to think only of your own interests. They surely will. If you have a mean streak, it’s okay to bring it out when dealing with evil. In fact, I consider it admirable.

So what’s the technique?

  • Evaluate a vendor on the first transaction, and decide whether you care. If you don’t care, find another vendor for that or just accept that this’ll never get better and stay with mediocrity. (Often necessary in small towns where there are only so many options and half the time they don’t even show up.)
  • Be polite and kind to good service providers, and don’t go back to those who don’t appreciate decent treatment. If you have no other option, put up the emotional wall and get through it.
  • Be especially polite and kind to service providers who see people at their worst, which is accomplished by trying to be at your best.
  • Don’t dicker just because you can. First see if their pricing is pretty fair, and if so, just pay it.
  • If you go to a store and milk them for some free advice, buy something. Always buy something when you go, even if small.
  • Remember that you’re not their only customer/patient/whatever. This could be called empathy.
  • Remember that they too have to make a living. This too could be called empathy.
  • Don’t overcontrol when you don’t really know that much. If they ask how you prefer something be done, ask them what they think makes the most sense.
  • Do little things. Tree removal people working all day in your back yard? Let them know they’re welcome to use your patio to eat their lunch. Hot as Satan’s perineum out there? Would it hurt you to offer them some ice water? Doubt it.

That could summarize this whole blog post. Be kind and generous until people show you that you need to be selfish.

 

Human relations, Social comment

D&D’s 50th Anniversary

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This is the point where I’m supposed to talk about how old it makes me feel that my childhood pastimes are celebrating golden anniversaries. The answer there is that I get enough reminders of my age from my knees, shoulders, sleep, restroom visits, and medications that seeing Dungeons & Dragons turn 50 doesn’t move the needle.

I just read an anniversary special magazine about the phenomenon, and while it was surveying a long period of diverse endeavors (games, cinema, etc.), it didn’t really seem to connect with the major factor that made the game impactful. I think no one who wasn’t alive when it came out is really in a position to recognize it. In that case, let me be of service:

D&D SHATTERED LIMITATIONS ON WHAT IT MEANT TO GAME.

Before D&D you had family games like Monopoly, where there were house rule deviations such as Free Parking, and strategy games like the early Avalon Hill releases in their 1960s heyday. Be they short or long, those games all had rules and offered no provision for bending or breaking them. They might be badly written; in Avalon Hill’s case, they might have large loopholes and unanswered cases; but no one was saying ‘just ignore them.’ Play, in other words, had to conform to rules made by someone else far away. No, no one would come and arrest you for breaking them; the hard part for rule benders was obtaining consensus.

And then, when I was about eleven, along came D&D. The publisher was called Tactical Studies Rules; rules were what they did. But unlike other games with big rulebooks, TSR said in essence: ‘The Dungeon Master is the final authority in all rules questions. Oh, and if you don’t like a rule, change it. Do it however you want.’

It is true that D&D opened up the realm for imagination by inviting players to create their own milieus, handing them books of tools to help them–but that’s what everyone already realizes. What not everyone realizes is how norm-shattering it was to tell people it was fine to bend or break the rules if that’s how they liked to play. In an era where one could be paddled for acting up in school, truant officers still existed and people cared whether you attended school, you could flunk and be held back, and varying other constraints limited the actions of a young person, TSR came as your liberator.

In fact, most people mostly played fairly close to the printed rules–but many of them were moved to develop their own systems. And all of it was storytelling, a form of collaborative fantasy novel writing. We didn’t have nanu-nanu or whatever exactly it’s called, but we did have D&D. A setting well guided by an effective DM, attended by players who let their imaginations run loco, meant that we were all learning the art of storytelling whether or not we knew it.

So really, it was that combination. No one had ever before told us to just do it our own way if we disapproved of our orders. Not only would we tell stories of our own, but we would do it with only the limitations imposed by consensus.

TSR battered down the cell walls that contained our creativity, and told us to be free. And that’s the single biggest impact–one that amplified the other and made it more than it might otherwise ever have become.

Editing/writing life, Social comment

Editorial Maverick: So you want to write a book?

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Cool. What’s first?

It doesn’t begin with banging the keys, which is not to say I discourage that–but it would probably work better if you gave it some thought first. If your story idea is boiling over and running out your ears, and you want to get it on paper as though you were under the lash, very well–but early on, at some point, when you have satiated that urge for the day, give these things some thought.

Be honest with yourself. Why do you want to do this? What drives you? Common reasons are money, recognition, bucket list, inner personal need, service to others, revenge upon others, making people laugh, therapy, making spines tingle, and so on; there are as many more as there are people. I suggest writing down three if you can summon them, using all the self-honesty you can muster. All motives that don’t lead you to get into serious trouble you cannot handle are okay.

Your motives are important because they will inform everything you do. If money matters, for example, you’ll have to have a marketing plan. I divide books into vanity and commercial projects, and I do it this way: If it has a marketing plan that intends to turn a profit, it’s a commercial project. Until it has such a plan, it’s a vanity project because there is minimal prospect for profit. “Hoping I get noticed by New York” is not a marketing plan.

Please don’t misunderstand: I love vanity projects. They are liberating and often powerful. Many are books I would read for enjoyment. What they aren’t is moneymakers. All the passion in the world is not a marketing plan. And if you don’t much love marketing, well, you have company and it begins with me. It is not my forte and I do it because I must, because one of the reasons I want to edit is to earn. I groove on helping people achieve their dreams, teaching them to avoid common problems, and becoming more of a friend than an editor. That is why I’m the Editorial Maverick: I don’t do it the way most people do it.

(I’m not joking at all. If you were to read some editors’ groups, you’d see why. One can only take so much “Edibuddies please help me Ive been struggling for six hours where to put this comma and CMoS doesn’t tell me!” Jeez. If you can’t make a simple decision about punctuation without help from a huge book, you are either too poorly read or too fearful to be an editor. Decide. That’s why they hire you. If they wanted it screwed up, they could do that without you.)

Note that nowhere am I saying you need to start by planning out your book. There are slang terms for those who advocate just writing, and those who create flow charts to map out the story. I don’t care which you do. It should be whichever works. What I am saying is that, while you are doing whatever you do at the start, make time to be honest about your motives and goals. It is very difficult to set goals without motives, and it is very difficult to achieve goals without setting them.

Once you have a self-honest compilation of your reasons for wanting to write a book, you can decide whether it should be a moneymaker or a hopefully-break-evener. Because if it’s the former, you need to start the marketing plan as soon as you decide to write a book. If it’s the latter, of course, you are liberated from considerations related to the former. Do as you like and feel no shame–it’s just fine.

Whatever you do, if you begin with self-honesty about motives and goals, and own those decisions, will be fine.

Book reviews, Social comment, Sports

Current read: Victory Faust, by Gabriel Schechter

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This is arguably the best baseball book you’ve probably never heard of.

My copy was a holiday gift from Mr. Schechter himself. I met him at a mutual friend’s birthday party, one mainly focused on baseball enthusiasts, and he was handing out copies. I’m glad he was.

In 1911, a farm guy from Marion, Kansas (one county over from the one where my parents grew up) was supposedly told by a fiction fortune teller that if he went to Manhattan (New York’s, not ours), he would become a successful baseball player and meet the woman of his dreams. Charles Victor Faust was not, shall we say, richly endowed with any better critical thinking skills than he was a pitching arm, a batting eye, or a sense of baserunning. He hared off to New York City to thrust himself upon John McGraw’s New York Giants, a team that had come close to glory in recent years but never quite made it.

Faust made enough of a pest of himself to gain admission to the Giants’ clubhouse, if not the roster. He proceeded to entertain, lighten the mood, and make a fool of himself daily. He was the only one not in on the joke. Baseball players being a superstitious lot, the fact that New York tended to win with Faust in attendance got their attention. They took the correlation seriously enough for McGraw to keep Faust around the dugout, entertaining fans with his warmups, absorbing the heckles and pranks of the players. At least, when he wasn’t doing vaudeville or sulking because McGraw wouldn’t give him a contract.

The pride of Marion even got to appear in a couple of late-season games. He hardly lit the diamond on fire, but he has stat lines on Baseball-Reference.com and I don’t. The Giants won the pennant, but fell to the Athletics in the Series. Faust had worn out his welcome and migrated west, giving up on his delusions of big league pitching grandeur but not on a generally delusional nature. This was before Portland and Seattle had come to embrace their quirkiness, and he spent time in asylums in Oregon then Washington. He died of TB in Western State Hospital at Steilacoom, WA, where it seems the original numeric grave marker has in recent years received augmentation from a plaque mentioning him by name. About time.

Schechter tells all this far more effectively than I have summarized it.  His lengthy research shows in the detail he has uncovered about a ballplayer who was otherwise somewhat of an obscure caricature of a ballplayer. He offers just enough personal comment to be witty, but never to slant the narrative. If you like offbeat baseball history, this book is a yes. If you appreciate quality writing, another yes. If you respect deep research, three-for-three.

Secondary market copies go for $20-30 at this writing. I looked for a way to buy them direct from Schechter (who surely has a stockpile given that he brought some as gifts) and did not find one, but affordable copies are available.

Editing/writing life, Social comment

Editorial Maverick: the unlamented death of lolling

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I refer, of course, to the unlamented abbreviation “lol.” I have a politically incorrect term for its addicts, one I will decline to share in a public presentation.

At first it was just a fun thing. Someone would private message something funny, and it was shorthand for saying that one was laughing aloud. All right. And then the cancerous node metastasized.

Soon it became the stand-in for a comma or even a period:

  • j: hi there
  • person: hello lol
  • j: how goes?
  • p: not so good lol
  • j: what’s wrong?
  • p: oh lol my car broke down on teh freeway lol and i had to have it toad lol now were getting evicted lol not sure what were gonna do lol maybe its time to get on the pole lol
  • how is this funny? doesn’t sound very amusing
  • i know rite lol

At that point I had to start controlling myself. Not only was it used when nothing was funny, but it made writing all but unreadable. I just stopped encouraging extensive conversations where I’d have to shovel through a lot of lolling. Now, I don’t worry about spelling errors, grammar, even case when typing in texts and private messages. Some people seem to imagine that editors spend every waking moment finding fault with their friends’ writing. If we did that, two things would happen. One, we’d be exhausted–too tired to do our work after all that free editing. Two, the problem would solve itself because no one would talk to us. All I care about is being able to make sense of the person I’m talking with. When something gets in the way of that, it also is exhausting.

But lolling seems to be in long-term care and about ready for hospice, and this would seem a perfect time for vocabulary assisted suicide. We don’t need this. We have emojis and other little face images that might not technically be emojis, but grouping them all under that term is convenient. The end of lolling seems at hand.

I won’t be attending the funeral, but neither will I grieve.

Editing/writing life, Social comment

Do English spelling and grammar even matter any more?

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Does that seem like a strange question coming from an editor? It shouldn’t–nor should one leap to conclusions regarding the answer.

I submit that the answer is a qualified yes. It has to be qualified due to these observable realities:

  • Not all communication is formal and professional. If we’re texting or PMing on FacePalm, do we really need to stress over mistakes? Not sure about your phone, but on mine it’s enough of a pain in the ass just texting understandably. There are many contexts in which I care about upper case, avoiding loose spaces, and so on. This one tends not to be such a context.
  • Language does evolve, however powerfully language conservatives rage against ‘deterioration.’ That there has been deterioration I think few can deny, but at any given point in time language differs from previous points of time, and its future will differ in turn. Look at the styles of 1800s and 1700s writing and you can see how it happened. There is never a time at which the orthodoxy is static, meaning that “perfectly correct” is a moving target.
  • As if that weren’t enough, many other countries have their own versions of English. There are more English speakers in India than in the United States. Australian and New Zealand English have marked differences, and I don’t recommend going there to try telling them they’re doing it wrong. Same for South Africa. Irish English and British English also differ from ours, with the added fillip that “The King’s English” is supposedly the mother tongue. Canadian English is akin to US English but with noteworthy British influence. If we’re going to talk about “correct English,” whose correct English do we mean? That of the largest numeric grouping, which would be Indian English?
  • Writers can be very effective yet be doing it “wrong.” When I get a ms that is written in some bizarre-looking form of English, I ask myself whether it’s effective. Some time back I did a line edit on a vanity book about of an elderly Alabama gentleman’s country music career. It sounded like what it was: a book written by a rural Alabamian nonagenarian. To edit it into some semblance of English perfection would have meant destroying the author’s basic tone. As it was, parts were a little repetitive and sometimes unclear, but his tone was familiar and regionally correct. His audience would understand every word of it, even find it warm and comforting; what was more, who would want to excise the author from his own autobiography? It’d have been lunacy.
  • At the opposite pole, I read a book by an L.A. gangster who converted to some variation of Islam and reformed. as i recall, it did not use upper case. It sounded like it was written by a moderately educated gangster. It was raw, real, personal, and effective. If he’d come to me as an editor, I doubt I would have tried to regularize his language. The way he wrote made it feel like the reader was getting to look at an otherwise inaccessible world. That I couldn’t think of a compelling benefit that would make it worth losing that feeling testified to the effectiveness of his style.

Qualifiers noted, I have indeed seen the quality of US English education and composition decline over my lifetime (don’t blame me). That gives it something in common with the rest of education during my adult life. With a dead battery, most people now are without their arithmetic. I was watching a frightful display of ignorance on Big Brother where someone thought London was in Paris, or Paris was in London. Most every day I read at least one adult female person refer to herself as “a women.” People not only don’t learn physics and geometry; they don’t even learn to adult. (There’s a verbing you might expect me to hate and reject. Nah; that word arose in reply to a genuine need, right around the time it became de-stigmatized to live with your parents once you grew up.)

All the more reason, some might say, to give no willing ground in the erosion of language standards. I understand the outlook on an emotional level. From a practical standpoint it feels like a King Canute activity. I’d rather fight for the differences that make differences, such as the abuse of “literally” to mean “figuratively.” We need that word. Without it we have no way to clarify whether a statement is hyperbolic or, well, literal.

In the end, my editorial outlook is that everything comes down to judgment and context. Does it work? If it does, any change requires a compelling case. If however its language causes it to fail, we need to rethink and adapt. There is no editorial Scripture, just some textbooks and style guides; they should be consulted but not worshipped or thumped at anyone. In the end we must apply our best understanding.

If it were as easy as just pointing to the arcana of the Chicago Manual and interpreting its holy words, this job would require far less experience and discernment. (I might start terming that crowd the “Chicago judiciary.”)

Married life, Social comment

Pre-suffering

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As my youth catches up with me, invoicing me for my poor decisions, I encounter the tendency to start dreading this or that now rather than wait.

While I might perhaps be avoiding long lines, I have to fight that. It would not do myself any favors.

I think some of us are more keenly affected by surprise than others. At the dentist, I ask her to let me know when we are a quarter of the way through, halfway, three-quarters, and nearly done. (I have a marvelously compassionate dentist.) If I’m having a medical exam, I must rassle my mind away from predicting all the possible batches of very bad news. Telling me my A1C needs to come down thus seems bearable, given that I was preparing to hear they were concerned about some mass in my abdomen.

Earlier this month my wife and I celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of her acceptance of my marriage proposal. We might be the only couple out there who celebrate such a day, but that’s all right with us. The fact that we’re having one, and that the only thing that will prevent a twenty-sixth is if one of us has something sudden happen to him or her, speaks for itself. Celebrate a day, again and again for a quarter century, and one communicates that one remains grateful for it.

Something sudden is the problem. If not restrained, my mind is sort of like a cat. Now and then it will wander off into someplace that doesn’t help anyone, and this would become paranoia if not handled in a sane fashion. For me, that means refraining from pre-suffering. It’s one thing to grieve ahead of time for a friend lost to pancreatic cancer–something I recently did–because it’s not paranoid to imagine that the friend will not survive it. Few do. It’s another thing to take that ball, run with it, and start thinking about a day in the future when one or one’s spouse might be given news of such a deadly affliction. And then to start processing grief on some level.

That’s pre-suffering, and it helps no one. It also carries with it a terrible pessimism, and this also must be battled. Imagine I were to find myself a sudden widower. If I’d worried myself half to death about that possibility for two decades, would the pre-suffering and all the time it had ruined do one bit of good to help me once the real thing was present and undeniable? I don’t think so. We have no idea how we will react to close loss, regardless of what we imagine. If I were eighty-five and received a diagnosis of dementia, would I grieve less if I’d screwed around for the last twenty-five years fearing dementia? Bet most people would not.

In essence, pre-suffering is an investment in an emotional stock that looks on the surface to be a huge bargain but in fact is going to zero. It is the Thornburg Mortgage of mental attitudes. (Let’s not talk about why that analogy rings so true for me.)

Human relations, Privacy, Social comment, Technology

Ways to make telemarketers have bad days

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Been getting a lot of these recently on the cell phone (which is also the business phone). Not sure why, but they always present us with the same choice: just hang up, or waste a scammer’s time. Because I’m the sort of person who will hit at an adversary with whatever he’s got, even if it’s a blade of grass, I waste their time.

When we do this, we should be careful.

I will never be as good at this as Haven Riney, who literally wrote the book on messing with telemarketers (that’s the title), but I have picked up/developed a few good methods for those of us who aren’t as quick-thinking in the moment. Here are my own guidelines for doing this:

Always remember that you are bound by no strictures of courtesy, honesty, or other values you might uphold in real life. If they were honest, they would not telemarket; ergo, they’re thieves. It is not moral to reward thievery with kind politeness, much less with success in any form. In any form. Seriously. They are among the few people in your world who deserve not one bit of understanding. When they aren’t talking to you, most of them are scamming bewildered elders (this is stealing and fraud).

Those rare few who are in fact offering an actual real service are like people coming onto your property with a weapon, then claiming that the fact that it was not loaded means you should have treated them as friends. You can’t see whether it’s loaded, so to speak, so you owe no distinction between honest and criminal, nor any energy expended to try. They’re all adversaries if you don’t know them.

Yes, I know it’s the day before US Thanksgiving. They’re still the adversary, and they will still be the adversary when many of us are sitting down to dinner tomorrow. I am thankful for just enough native creative wickedness to give them what they deserve, and for the fundamental crassness to advocate it even at festive times.

While it could be fun and would certainly be moral to press the get-a-human number on the robocalls–objective being to seek out a human’s time to waste–I myself won’t go that far because it’s like giving them permission. They should never get any permission. If you think it’s a robocall and want to test, just go hoccccccch real loudly, as if you are about to expel a mucous. A robot won’t know how to interpret that (robots do not experience mucous). A person will ask whether you’re okay, or will hang up.

  • First rule: Never, never, never say “yes” to any question. There are scam artists who will take that one recorded word and use it to show some sort of proof of your agreement. When you answer that phone, that word isn’t in your vocabulary.
  • Second rule: First job is to suss out whether they have your real name (quite often if you are a homeowner), someone else’s, or have just called at random. If they have your real name and/or address, find out what it’s about just in case it’s actually a legitimate call. While it might annoy you for your auto repair shop to call and market to you, that’s not as evil as someone trying to sell you Inhumana Medicare Silver Senior Elder Suckup Advantage “that you deserve.” (You know, the sort of thing you get between watching segments of Crochet Wars on The Living Antiquity Channel, which promises to put money back in your Social Security and give you free continence products. That You Deserve. Whatever it is, You always Deserve It.)
  • Third rule: Try to avoid saying anything illegal. This article discourages any activity that violates US law. It’s not as if someone in Shaitanabad or Santa Sinvergüenza can exactly call the FBI and have you arrested–but be careful nonetheless. Bear in mind that buying or selling under false pretenses is against the law depending on how it’s done, while just talking to a caller under false pretenses is not. Do a little self-editing.

Clearly, if it’s someone you do business with, you have better choices and should consider that. For example, you can tell them to stop, and they would be wise to heed you. But before you do that, make sure it’s not them trying to help you. It might be the nurse from your medical provider with a message from your doctor. I never advocate being an idiot.

Assuming it’s not a legit call: If they have your real name, deny it of course, remembering that how you answer anything could tend to confirm it by mistake. If they ask whether you still live at 101 Maple Street, the logical question is not “no”; it’s “which city is that even in?” Make up any name you want. Count von Crappenburg. Imelda Reina de los Zapatos. Alexei Alexeyevich Romanov. Joe Schwantz. Barron Maples. You have no idea where that address is, or even what state it’s in, but you live at x address. If you know it, pick the address of city hall, or the sheriff’s office, or your local mall. Tell them you’re homeless and living in a tent along I-5 atop Mount Rubbish. Claim to live in an army barracks, or an army tank for that matter. Claim to be flying an F-13 and about to shoot down some North Korean Dong missiles. To any question they ask, you tell anything but the truth. They have no right to ask such nosy questions anyway, so this is the proper way to reply.

Once you have worked out that it’s not real, and have assessed and blunted potential dangers, you are free to have some fun. The only rule is to drag the conversation out as long as possible (wasting their time) and making it as fruitless and annoying as possible. Everyone doing this should be made not to like it. This isn’t the grocery checker, who is earning an honest living and deserves your kind patience and courtesy when she is overwhelmed. This is not the guy at the McDonald’s window, underpaid and probably mistreated by his manager, who deserves your civility and decency. This is not the saintly nurse who stayed on the job through two years of pandemic and will not stop caring for people, even for donkeys who refused vaccination and then had the gall to expect care for their coronavirus. This is not the waitress at Denny’s, who should never be punished because the kitchen is stupid, and whose livelihood depends on you tipping her fairly based upon her service. This is not those good people. This is a bad person in a bad business. This is your chance to punish them. For example:

  • Affect an accent. Any accent. If it mimics their accent, that’s fine. That would be considered at least borderline bigoted if it were a decent person, but remember: it’s not a decent person. They choose to telemarket or join scam operations, mostly offshore, spoofing phone numbers so that you won’t know who it is. If they have an accent, there is nothing wrong with mocking it, whether it’s a Deep South drawl or a Pakistani lilt.
  • Come up with a name, since you are not going to admit to your real one. The more credible it is, the longer the call might go. Batman Supergirl might not get much traction. Cecilia Yobukovskaya might do better.
  • If you speak foreign languages, use them when you see fit. One sentence in English, one in Spanish. Be careful with Spanish, lest they say “Purdonnamay, senior, no hobblo esspaniel, uno momentito pourfuvor.” If they do that, and you speak a third language, when the Spanish speaker arrives you can switch to that. Imagine the conversation later: “You ignorant asshat. The name he gave you means “smoke pole” in Spanish and the language he was speaking was probably Italian. What, you think every foreign language is Spanish? Who even diapers you in the morning?”
  • Think of a backstory and flesh it out. Look back to an earlier phase of your life and answer as that person. Think of the craziest person you know and answer as them. The nephew who became a meth addict? This is the only good that will ever come of that human tragedy.
  • Consider speaking very slowly and not understanding half of what they say. Use enormous amounts of regional slang that no one in Hyderabad is likely to know. Talk about interests you don’t have. Tell them that you are an ethical vegan and that meat is murder and ask if their company abides by vegan principles. (If you in fact are an ethical vegan, ask them something else, so as not to tell them the truth in any way.) Ask them if their company is organic according to USC 14.285.828a. Since I just made that one up, they probably won’t understand it even if they’re American.
  • Tell them that you live by the Shania Laws of Appalachian Islam and that it’s time for your daily prayers. (Get a confederate (upper case possibly) to sing the Call to Prayer: “Y’all come pray now.”)
  • Go wild. Ask if they have Jesus. If so, ask whether they can help you find him and let him out. Ask if they have Satan (they do, whether they know it or not), and encourage them to let him into their hearts. Tell them you have ten million dollars in the credit union, and that the credit union is actually complaining because it takes up too much vault space. Ask if they like vaping.
  • Repeatedly interrupt the conversation by admonishing an imaginary child or dog. (“Timmy! Don’t do that or you’re going in the stew!”) Apologize in advance for your Tourette’s, and have periodic outbursts. Claim a very interesting occupation, such as cat herdswoman or fertilizer processor or bison yoga instructor or dromedary veterinary assistant. Say “kushkushkushkush” as if telling a camel to kneel. Be Jed Clampett. Be Elly May Clampett. Best of all, if you can pull it off, be Granny. Irene Ryan was one of the funniest comics I ever saw.
  • Ask the nuttiest possible questions about their product or service. Does their insurance cover Peyronie’s Syndrome? Scrotal lesions? Does it cover therapy for obsessive-apathetic disorder? Organ failure? Piles? Tiles? What about pudding therapy? Will their home refinance loan have an interest rate below 1%? They say that your “Windows Computer” is spreading a virus and they want you to go to a website; go to your microwave, pretend to have mistaken it for a computer, and attempt to follow their directions. Will their home warranty cover cases of Orson? “No, not arson. That’s illegal. Orson is different, obviously. It mostly affects houses with Welles, and can be quite costly to repair.”
  • Got a confederate in the house? Have her start screaming in the other room. Tell your child that right now it’s encouraged to go totally cattiewhompus. Got multiple people? Have them fake an argument in the Pentagon. “Fuck you, General! We are invading Guam only with Navy ships!” “They don’t do very well on land, Admiral.” “Dipshit, it’s an island! The Army can’t even get there unless they swim! This is our turf, so go dig a foxhole!” Got a cough? You do now! Sneezing fit? Let ’em rip in the middle of everything the caller says, then ask them to repeat it. Got a kid whose hobby is making flatulence noises with his armpit? Get him to do it as loudly as possible near the phone.

If you had fun, wasted their time, and gave them no truthful or useful information, you did well. If you felt a twinge, that’s normal; behaving with a complete lack of consideration is not natural for most of us. In such a case, remember:

  • No one forced these people to call you.
  • Nothing they are offering is legitimate.
  • Nearly all of them are giving false phone numbers.
  • Most aren’t even using their real names.
  • All of it is a fundamental insult to your intelligence.
  • While you’re wasting their time, they aren’t preying on someone’s grandma.
  • You are performing a community service, a random act of caring for others. It’s one of the few community services you can perform by being as cruel as possible.

Leave scars.

Book reviews, Social comment

Current read: Forget the Alamo by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford

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Provocative, eh? From my little editing perch with its industry perspective, I have to admire the marketing value of such a title. That’s how you throw a bomb. Love the book or hate it, I don’t see too much of Texas being neutral about it. Then again, I’ve only been to Texas a couple of times, and it’s probably one of the two or three states where I would least fit in. I do care about US history, though, and if California history is US history, so is that of Texas.

The book first sets forth to tell the history preceding and including the Texas Revolt, based on what the authors consider the best evidence and historical analysis. They do not reach the conclusion that has long been taught in Texas schools. They contend that black, Native American, and Hispanic participation has been written out or diminished, or at the very least oversimplified. This fortified a Heroic Anglo Narrative to which the remaining bits of the old mission compound in San Antonio represent the ultimate shrine.

The next part of the book, about half, details the making of the legend. It’s been what, 185 years since Santa Anna finally had it with his Texian subjects (and illegal US aliens who refused to abide by Mexican law) and marched in to subdue them? If you guess that people have spent the entire time arguing over the story itself, if and how it should be preserved, and who has the say in its future, you can don your coonskin cap in celebration. The story of the story of the Alamo is almost as interesting as the story of the Alamo, and is as germane to US history. Given the key role in advocacy and preservation (and in some cases, turf warring and neglect) played by women’s groups, it is also women’s history. (Not all of women’s history is automatically admirable. Time and again, they’ve proven they deserve to be remembered for their successes and failures, just like men.)

I don’t think any objective, educated reader of history doubts that there are some unverifiable “facts” that most people believe about the Alamo because those people want to believe them. That is normal about most history; why not this one?  I do think that any such reader realizes that minority contributions to the story have been minimized or bent into strange shapes. The error would be in somehow imagining the Alamo story as unique in this regard because it has been told–insisted upon–with such strident passion. I deprecate the idea that the loudest voice must be considered the victor. The louder they yell, the more suspicious I get.

Put simply, incomplete or exaggerated history happens everywhere. We just pay more attention to this one because people make so much noise about it, almost defying the world to contradict them. Well, yeah. If I sit in my living room, where no one can hear me, and say something provocative based on false premises, I’m probably not getting much hate mail over it. If it put it on an airplane banner, that’s another story.

The greatest thing about the book is the writing itself. I used to love Molly Ivins’s style, affectionate toward her homeland even when critical of it, like when her employing newspaper folded and she commented that she’d never had a newspaper shot out from under her before. It was always fun and often funny. This book is a history, and the history of the making of a history, told in just such a relaxed style. I can almost hear a gentle drawl as I read it. I believe she would have loved it and its message.

I find the authors’ historical study credible. To me, the amount of pushback they have gotten tells me that the detractors have long known there were ugly realities about the story, did not want to explore those ugly realities, and would defend this old mission compound’s ruins as a key bastion in the culture wars. Put it this way: If the authors were full of shit, and everyone had good reason to believe that, no one would feel threatened–just annoyed. It’s like that political fringe nut who thinks the queen of England is a drug dealer. The suggestion is not credible enough for the monarchy, or its defenders, to take seriously.

This book was very much worth my time.

Book reviews, Social comment, Sports

Current read: Out of Their League, Dave Meggysey

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While this book first saw the light of day in 1970, it amazes me how relevant it remains today.

Meggysey, one of a large family born to Hungarian immigrants, grew up in Ohio and one might say found his way into professional football without ever having seriously dreamed of playing at the highest level. From high school to Syracuse to the end of his NFL career with the Cardinals, a part of him always knew that football culture was exploitative and racist. What would have been a dream for many young American men was a career from which he was eager to move on.

Moving on was simple enough. As the sixties moved on, all he had to do was become active in anti-war and anti-racist activities. That would get him shown the door if he didn’t retire first, which he did. He moved on to a career in education and activism.

The striking thing about Meggysey’s story is that our progress in fifty years has been modest and incremental at best. He tells freely of the ways and amounts in which Syracuse players were paid, a process that goes on today though less openly. (Whenever I see a college program rocket from mehness to top-ten recruiting classes, my first assumption is that they decided to go the bagman route.) He believes American football has a toxic culture. While I still like the college game, and I do not regret my high school playing days, I also think he is right–especially in places where football is the primary religious preference.

There’s no doubt in my mind that Dave Meggysey, like me, would be proud to kneel with Colin Kaepernick. I don’t have much use for mass nationalistic rallies prior to sporting events. I see them as manipulative and indoctrinary. One major change since his playing days involves the demographics of college and professional football, which are now very heavily black and Polynesian. You’d think it would be impossible to have racist issues in football coaching at any level above high school, and yet we keep hearing of them.

I don’t pretend to know all the answers; perhaps in the past fifty years Meggysey has found some. My biggest takeaway from this book was a better understanding of the game’s dynamics during its unsettled sixties, and the understanding that its troubles are nothing new.

Why I had never heard of him, I have no idea. I’ve normally heard of most conspicuous nonconformists in sports I follow, including those mostly before my time. I am glad I found him now, and I hope I get to meet him someday.