It seems like the store has gotten used to operating as it has been these last couple weeks. I went in late at night and it almost felt normal. Of course, there are still signs that direct you which way to go down which aisle and all the staff wear masks (the same cannot be said for the customers, unfortunately), but it’s a month later. It’s different now. The feeling is different. I mean, I still wouldn’t go in there unless I had to. As I alluded to in that parenthetical, I only saw three people (not including myself) wearing a mask, and I’m not sure one of those wasn’t just a duplicate. And now that I realize it, the direction markings aren’t conspicuous enough if I can accidentally go the wrong way down one and not realize until halfway through.
Some of this might also be, well, because it was late at night and, therefore, much less crowded than the store’s maximum, which is almost five-hundred. One-way aisles work much better, I am sure, when there isn’t just one person in them ever. The mask thing is less excusable, and it almost makes me want to see if another store nearby does have a mask policy. They already have an employee wiping the handles of the carts, and they already have a security officer, it stands to reason one could inform the other on certain matters of civil protection.
In fact, as I was checking out, I overheard a conversation between someone and this security, talking about this very thing. But I don’t think this is the time where friendly conversation is going to get anything done. We’re seeing that in other arenas of the country already.
-F
Tuesday, June 30, 2020
Tuesday, June 23, 2020
In the Middle
I’m at this point where there are so many things I know I should be writing about and yet I can’t find the words for any of them. Some of that is, like, hesitation, waiting until situations resolve themselves (hopefully for the better, and I have tried to do my part to make that happen) before tackling it and some of it is worry that a recap of the events just isn’t my story to tell. That’s why this post is late, by the way, and also why it’s probably unsatisfying as all get out to read.
I do have ideas for what I want to be saying and how, though. It’ll probably end up turning into something longer, in which case you probably won’t see it on this blog for a while, if at all. But I’ll keep you in the loop for it.
-F
I do have ideas for what I want to be saying and how, though. It’ll probably end up turning into something longer, in which case you probably won’t see it on this blog for a while, if at all. But I’ll keep you in the loop for it.
-F
Tuesday, June 16, 2020
Online Spaces
When I started this blog, one of the sub-resolutions I had going along with it was “put myself out there on the internet more”. This wasn’t, like, a “get involved in social media” sort of deal, but I have noticed this tendency of mine to stay on the periphery in social situations and the barrier of a computer screen seemed like a good way to get used to, well, not doing that.
I mean, the inevitable problems are still the same; there’s an already established in-group in online communities, and I’m not sure anonymity has really helped in overcoming that. Usernames, after all, are almost as ubiquitous as actual names in certain circles, and while the option to just create a new account isn’t prohibited (and sometimes, oddly, even encouraged), that does mean pretending to be a new person, and I’m not sure I’m able to do that for long periods of time.
What’s weird, even to me, is that I still don’t intentionally link my name with my online username. That doesn’t mean they aren’t connected, but I tend to avoid drawing that connection if I can help it. So I’m still playing someone, even if that someone is just “me, but online”. And “me, but online” still has all the trouble real me has getting into an “ingroup.”
I don’t have a solution to this or anything, though it is slowly getting better. I guess this blog post becomes a progress update, in that case? In which case, progress is okay. We’ll see what happens.
-F
I mean, the inevitable problems are still the same; there’s an already established in-group in online communities, and I’m not sure anonymity has really helped in overcoming that. Usernames, after all, are almost as ubiquitous as actual names in certain circles, and while the option to just create a new account isn’t prohibited (and sometimes, oddly, even encouraged), that does mean pretending to be a new person, and I’m not sure I’m able to do that for long periods of time.
What’s weird, even to me, is that I still don’t intentionally link my name with my online username. That doesn’t mean they aren’t connected, but I tend to avoid drawing that connection if I can help it. So I’m still playing someone, even if that someone is just “me, but online”. And “me, but online” still has all the trouble real me has getting into an “ingroup.”
I don’t have a solution to this or anything, though it is slowly getting better. I guess this blog post becomes a progress update, in that case? In which case, progress is okay. We’ll see what happens.
-F
Tuesday, June 9, 2020
Books I'll Never Read
I’m sitting near a copy of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit as I write this. It’s a book that is not only almost six-hundred pages long, it also has a reputation of being at times incomprehensible to those not taking an entire university-level course on the subject thanks to the author’s questionable prose. It’s not something I plan to read anytime soon, and indeed, when I picked it up, I joked about how it could sit on my shelf of the books I have but have never read.
To be fair, it’s not like I went out and bought a copy of Hegel. The exact circumstances with which this book came into my possession aren’t really something I feel comfortable talking about on this blog, but the closest analog, I suppose, would be something akin to a gift. The important thing is, I didn’t spend any money on it. If I had, I feel like I would have a different attitude towards it; I don’t generally go out and buy books I know I won’t read. If I bought it, I’d be more likely to at least give it an honest effort.
If a book cost me twenty dollars and I don’t read it, then I feel like I’m out twenty dollars. If someone else bought it, then I don’t feel like that person’s twenty dollars matters whether I read the book or not. That probably sounds flippant or ungrateful, but I guess a better way to think about it would be this: if I bought it, I spent twenty dollars so I could read a book. If somebody else bought it, they spent twenty dollars so they could give me a book. In the latter, the transaction is already completed -- I got the book, didn’t I?
This sort of thinking does discount libraries, of course, which (in the before times) I imagine would be a middle ground of sorts. I wouldn’t have spent anything besides the time searching it out, but that’s still my time, right? That’s not nothing.
There are definitely other factors I’m discounting by thinking like this. I’m just trying to make sense of what I’ve already been doing, reasoning out actions I’ve already taken instead of talking about the thought process that led up to a decision and this is where my mind went to first. Maybe I need to read more books about it.
-F
To be fair, it’s not like I went out and bought a copy of Hegel. The exact circumstances with which this book came into my possession aren’t really something I feel comfortable talking about on this blog, but the closest analog, I suppose, would be something akin to a gift. The important thing is, I didn’t spend any money on it. If I had, I feel like I would have a different attitude towards it; I don’t generally go out and buy books I know I won’t read. If I bought it, I’d be more likely to at least give it an honest effort.
If a book cost me twenty dollars and I don’t read it, then I feel like I’m out twenty dollars. If someone else bought it, then I don’t feel like that person’s twenty dollars matters whether I read the book or not. That probably sounds flippant or ungrateful, but I guess a better way to think about it would be this: if I bought it, I spent twenty dollars so I could read a book. If somebody else bought it, they spent twenty dollars so they could give me a book. In the latter, the transaction is already completed -- I got the book, didn’t I?
This sort of thinking does discount libraries, of course, which (in the before times) I imagine would be a middle ground of sorts. I wouldn’t have spent anything besides the time searching it out, but that’s still my time, right? That’s not nothing.
There are definitely other factors I’m discounting by thinking like this. I’m just trying to make sense of what I’ve already been doing, reasoning out actions I’ve already taken instead of talking about the thought process that led up to a decision and this is where my mind went to first. Maybe I need to read more books about it.
-F
Tuesday, June 2, 2020
The Grocery (Part Two)
I noticed a few things on my most recent grocery trip. I figured I could write about them.
The biggest one is in the signage. Multiple signs now indicate that aisles are one-way only, though I also noticed that with all the management at the front of the store, there wasn’t much enforcement going on. I think I counted three times I saw someone going the wrong way? The signage is such that it’s hard to miss.
The mask policy is still the same, as in, there hasn’t been one. Most of the shoppers still do, as do all the staff, but I also noticed more people going without than last time. It could be that I wasn’t looking, though.
Lastly, there was a moment while I was bagging everything when someone else came up to the self-checkout station and started scanning, but was stopped and told to wait as I finished. I imagine this was in place before, but on previous trips, instead of being able to find out, a staff member came up and started bagging items after I had already scanned as I was still checking out, so I can’t say for certain.
I guess we’re surviving? So far, at least, yeah, we’re surviving.
-F
The biggest one is in the signage. Multiple signs now indicate that aisles are one-way only, though I also noticed that with all the management at the front of the store, there wasn’t much enforcement going on. I think I counted three times I saw someone going the wrong way? The signage is such that it’s hard to miss.
The mask policy is still the same, as in, there hasn’t been one. Most of the shoppers still do, as do all the staff, but I also noticed more people going without than last time. It could be that I wasn’t looking, though.
Lastly, there was a moment while I was bagging everything when someone else came up to the self-checkout station and started scanning, but was stopped and told to wait as I finished. I imagine this was in place before, but on previous trips, instead of being able to find out, a staff member came up and started bagging items after I had already scanned as I was still checking out, so I can’t say for certain.
I guess we’re surviving? So far, at least, yeah, we’re surviving.
-F
Tuesday, May 26, 2020
Collab
Writing collaboratively is an interesting process, especially once you’ve gotten used to having it be a solo activity for so long. Some of it is just a loss of control with regards to certain aspects of the story. If you’re both pantsing (that is, “writing by the seat of your pants”) then not only do you not know where the story is going to end up, you might not even know what’s around the corner. Sometimes I find myself floundering, unsure of how I can guide any of the characters in a way that helps my writing partner.
In general, the same techniques used in improv have worked. The most quoted, “say ‘yes and’” has been a good enough baseline and I’m sure with experience, others will follow. The opposite end of the spectrum is also helpful, though. Having an outline and assigning bits and pieces, so long as people understand that outlines can change, can also end up being productive and gets rid of that fear of ruining plans.
I don’t pretend to be an expert in any of this. I’ve only recently started doing it as a way to keep social with some online friends. It’s a good way to stay accountable at the very least, and it has helped.
-F
In general, the same techniques used in improv have worked. The most quoted, “say ‘yes and’” has been a good enough baseline and I’m sure with experience, others will follow. The opposite end of the spectrum is also helpful, though. Having an outline and assigning bits and pieces, so long as people understand that outlines can change, can also end up being productive and gets rid of that fear of ruining plans.
I don’t pretend to be an expert in any of this. I’ve only recently started doing it as a way to keep social with some online friends. It’s a good way to stay accountable at the very least, and it has helped.
-F
Tuesday, May 19, 2020
More Thoughts About Spoilers
I don’t know how I got into this mindset, but whenever someone tells me something they might consider a spoiler, if I ever read or watch or play that thing they’re talking about, I assume they were lying? The first example that comes to mind is a narrative game called Firewatch, which has a twist that can come out of left field if you’re not prepared for it. And even then, after watching a video where someone mentioned it, I had a hard time piecing together just how it had happened while playing. Like, I knew, but I hadn’t accepted it yet.
Maybe it’s that I just don’t care? That seems like an elitist way to phrase it, though. “Oh, you shouldn’t care what other people say happens to these people” seems awfully mean to the people who do really care, and have good reasons for caring. That’s one of the points of media, after all, to provoke empathy. And it’s not like I made a conscious decision to ignore knowing the ending, it just sort of happened, if that makes sense.
In a way, I might compare this to what I talked about when I complained about biopics because those are kind of spoiled by default. People know what happens to Freddie Mercury, for example, just like how pop culture has made the initial genre shift of Psycho less effective. But both of these can be made up for with good elements elsewhere, compare Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and Gus Van Sant’s near-shot-for-shot remake and you’ll see what I mean.
This also ties in with a recent trend of creators feeling like they need to be smarter than the people they’re catering to. Westworld ran into this most directly -- series head Jonathan Nolan mentioned changing the twist of an episode because people on Reddit had already guessed the twist they’d been going for. And that seems like a weird way to be making something to me, just shoveling in twist after twist without a thought to cohesion.
The twist in Firewatch, upon reflection, is actually thematically cohesive with the rest of the work. I won’t talk about it here, but it does tie in with the game’s themes of coping with loneliness and dealing with familial issues. So maybe that’s why I didn’t mind knowing about it ahead of time. It seems difficult, to me, for something with a twist for a twist’s sake to have a similar effect, but those media will likely be hamstrung by the passage of time anyway. Once everyone knows what’s up, it’ll fade from the zeitgeist, never to be meaningfully talked about again.
-F
Maybe it’s that I just don’t care? That seems like an elitist way to phrase it, though. “Oh, you shouldn’t care what other people say happens to these people” seems awfully mean to the people who do really care, and have good reasons for caring. That’s one of the points of media, after all, to provoke empathy. And it’s not like I made a conscious decision to ignore knowing the ending, it just sort of happened, if that makes sense.
In a way, I might compare this to what I talked about when I complained about biopics because those are kind of spoiled by default. People know what happens to Freddie Mercury, for example, just like how pop culture has made the initial genre shift of Psycho less effective. But both of these can be made up for with good elements elsewhere, compare Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and Gus Van Sant’s near-shot-for-shot remake and you’ll see what I mean.
This also ties in with a recent trend of creators feeling like they need to be smarter than the people they’re catering to. Westworld ran into this most directly -- series head Jonathan Nolan mentioned changing the twist of an episode because people on Reddit had already guessed the twist they’d been going for. And that seems like a weird way to be making something to me, just shoveling in twist after twist without a thought to cohesion.
The twist in Firewatch, upon reflection, is actually thematically cohesive with the rest of the work. I won’t talk about it here, but it does tie in with the game’s themes of coping with loneliness and dealing with familial issues. So maybe that’s why I didn’t mind knowing about it ahead of time. It seems difficult, to me, for something with a twist for a twist’s sake to have a similar effect, but those media will likely be hamstrung by the passage of time anyway. Once everyone knows what’s up, it’ll fade from the zeitgeist, never to be meaningfully talked about again.
-F
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