Parapoetica

A guy I know just sent me the ubiquitous “boycott ExxonMobil” chain letter. (I won’t call him a friend, because anyone who sends me chain letters is no friend of mine.) Now, this isn’t that don’t-buy-gas for a day letter, no, because that would be stupid. Even this chain letter knows that.

No, this one suggests we use the power of geometric growth to fuel our non-fueling: Just send the letter to 10 people, and buy gas anywhere but ExxonMobil. Then send it to their friends, and so on, and so on, and not only are we all using the same shampoo, but:

If those three million get excited and pass this on to ten friends each, then 30 million people will have been contacted! If it goes one level further, you guessed it….. THREE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE!!!

What upsets me is not that the premise is horribly flawed to anyone with half a brain (that is to say, anyone not living in Boston): What upsets me is that the author takes a perfectly good idea, and squanders it by not carrying through on the vision. Why on earth are we stopping at three hundred million?

Why on earth, indeed. All we have to do is take it two steps further, and we’ve got this e-mail going to THIRTY BILLION PEOPLE. That’s FIVE TIMES the population of the Earth. Do you know what that means?

OK, I’ll spell it out for you geniuses. How many CEOs of ExxonMobil are there? Right. One. And we know the population of the Earth: Six billion. So the odds of any one person being the CEO of ExxonMobil is 1 in 6 billion.

Now. We just sent our chain letter to 30 billion people, but that’s more people than actually exist. Which means that all six billion people have BETTER than 100% odds of receiving this letter. INCLUDING THE CEO!

Did you catch that? The CEO of ExxonMobil has ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE better odds at receiving the chain letter than he does of EXISTING AT ALL! That means that the CEO of ExxonMobil will be PART OF THE CHAIN! I repeat…

+THE CEO OF EXXONMOBIL WILL BE BOYCOTTING HIS OWN STATIONS!!!!+

Once that happens, all we have to do is call a few TV stations, broadcast that on the news, and he’ll HAVE to lower the price. I know a few freelance reporters I can call. I’m sure some of you do too.

Let’s get cracking.

Attention, all Boston women on JDate: Here are some things you should know.

• Your screen name defines you. If you define yourself by what you like to watch other people do, THIS IS WHY YOU ARE STILL SINGLE. (This means you, BoSox ladies.)

• If your photo includes you holding a small child, I’m going to assume it’s yours.

• If your photo includes you holding a man, I’m going to assume he’s yours.

• If your photo includes you holding a white square space where a man used to be, I’m going to assume you’re an idiot.

• If you cannot spell your own occupation, I’m going to be sure you’re an idiot. Double penalties if you’re a teacher. Triple penalties if you actually invent a word, such as “appreciatative”. QUADRUPLE penalties if you misspell your own invented word as “appreciatitive”.

• Speaking of which: Why are all of you teachers? I mean, great, think of the children, they’re our future, etc., but come on—can’t I meet a particle physicist once in a while? Sorry, but with the exception of Jaime Escalante, I don’t usually find teachers all that fascinating. Neither do you, and that’s why you’re on JDate instead of scoping out the new social studies hire in the break room.

• Your photo should not, in any way, resemble Tammy Faye Bakker.

• If you can’t come up with 100 words without complaining about having to come up with 100 words, you are either dull-witted or dull. THIS IS ALSO WHY YOU ARE STILL SINGLE.

• If the first sentence of your profile repeats your age and city, see above.

• If the first sentence of your profile not only repeats but actually differs from the age or city in your profile, you are not only unimaginative, but very, very strange.

• “Slender” means “average”. “Average” means “a few extra pounds”. “A few extra pounds” means “fat”. “Voluptuous” means “When I sit around the house, I really sit around the house.”

• Your photo should not, in any way, resemble Stevie Nicks.

• Avoid cliches. Avoid tautologies. Avoid stating the self-evident. (See ClicheBoy for examples.) Here’s a helpful hint: For every sentence you write, you should be able to find someone who would say “Oh, I disagree”. Let’s test that out. “I like to laugh.” BUZZ. “I dress up sometimes and wear sweats at other times.” BUZZ! “I want someone who can be my lover and my best friend.” BUZZ! BUZZ BUZZ! “Communication is key.” Jesus H. BUZZ!

• Do not attempt to make a joke unless you have been told by someone outside your family that you are funny.

• Corollary: If you have to say “I’m just kidding”, you’re not funny.

• Your photo should not, in any way, resemble Gracie Allen.

• Flying to Paris is not a suitable first date. Please read the question again.

• Six non-cliche phrases that should still never appear in your profile:
  • I have been single by choice for over…
  • I’m sexy.
  • I tend to be sarcastic
  • mind games
  • I grew up in New Jersey
  • their baggage

• Your photo should not, in any way, resemble Steve Allen.

• Five sentences that don’t mean what you think they mean:
  • “A perfect match for me would be someone with a heart of gold as well as my best friend.”
  • “I could be found in sweats sipping tea by the fire or at a black tie affair.”
  • " I am looking for someone who is ready to share their lives with the right person."
  • “I am also looking for that mental connection; in other words, someone who I look forward to talking to after getting to know that person.”
  • " I am well travelled."

Computer scientists: “Electronic voting machines are fraught with risk. A hacker or rogue programmer could easily change the outcome of an election without leaving any evidence!”

Skeptics: “Yes, but is there any evidence of that?”

People of different temperaments have different ways of making decisions. Which group do you fall into?

dl. Group 1. Flexible:Changing your mind in the presence of new information
Group 2. Vacillating:Changing your mind upon the prospect of new information
Group 3. Obsessive:Prospecting for new information to change your mind

Hint: If you’ve ever had this conversation:

You fall into group 3.

I don’t know much about Sudan. Until this morning, I didn’t know precisely where it was. I don’t know anyone from there; I don’t know what the prominent religion is. I don’t know what the Janjawid militias want, and what the Ivory Coast (on the other side of Africa) has to do with the whole thing. I don’t know anything about the political situation, and I don’t know the eloquent words to write to stir people to passion. Which doesn’t matter, because I have no idea what it is we as individuals can possibly do.

I just know that they’re burning children alive (via) over there, and that 60 years ago, when this happened to my ancestors, nobody did anything. And we said never again, and it’s happening again.

Berklee’s curriculum and faculty are mostly top-notch, but their audio electronics theory leaves much to be desired. Some crazy stuff I’ve “learned” in the past few weeks:

• A balanced output works by switching the positive and negative wires. The input just sums them together.

• The only difference between radio signals and sound waves is the frequency. If you take a sound wave and increase the frequency it becomes electromagnetic.

• Digital delays with “tap” functions aren’t as accurate as a tape delay, because if the beat of the music falls on the off-beat of the tapping you just did, the first delay will be early.

• All stereo sources should be panned hard left and right.

Sigh.

Update 7/24:

As Preben Friis has pointed out, genuine stereo sources or effects should in fact be panned hard left and right when using mono channels with pan pots, and the faders should be used to simulate a balance control. With mono pan pots, if you (say) pan the left channel to 9 o’clock and right to 12 o’clock, you’ll end up bringing right-channel information over to the left channel, possibly causing some cancellation, and certainly destroying stereo information.

Last fall, as the temperature dropped, the smokers at Back Bay station stopped smoking near the doorway and started smoking on the platforms. I begged management to put up more prominent No Smoking" sighs for three months, to no avail, so I finally installed a few myself in a case of constructive vandalism.

Well, when they swept the station as part of the DNC beautification, they removed them. I guess I should have put flowers in front of them or something.

Just read about the case of Sundeep Sahni, a Sikh at Boston College who was detained for hours by the Secret Service because he was taking pictures of the campus. Agents lied to his friends, saying he had a criminal record, and at one point told him “I don’t want you pulling an Uzi from your turban.” Oddly enough, only he was questioned; the owner of the camera, a Muslim from Saudi Arabia (but one in Western-style dress) was not.

I don’t know which is worse – making assumptions about an entire race of people based on the actions of a few, or making assumptions about another race of people because they look (to Caucasian eyes) sort of like the first class of people, or the inability of our supposedly crack Secret Service to know the difference between an Indian and an Arab. It’s inhumanity compounded with ineptitude.

One of Berklee’s elevators yesterday. Yes, my tuition dollars at work in our accessible, safe facilities.. perhaps the elevator was transposed up a whole step.

Whole lot of talk on the net about the MBTA’s upcoming policy of random bag-searching (permanent) and bag-size limitations on certain lines (DNC only). Some interesting debate on both sides, but what struck me was this suggestion from Beth at Mutated Monkeys:

“For four days, can’t people just carry their uniforms or books, sans bag?”

Beth seems like an otherwise-smart blogger, but clearly she has forgotten what it’s like to be a college student. Or perhaps her classes were all held in some kind of weird alternative universe where they have no supplementary materials. Sadly, she doesn’t allow comments, but perhaps she reads her trackbacks.

I’ve been going to Berklee for a year. I’m one of the lucky ones; I’m a vocalist. That means I don’t have to carry an instrument, which is going to be bigger than a loaf of bread, and which pretty much has to be carried in its case. All I really have to carry in my bag every day for classes is:

• Microphone
• 25’ cord
• Earplugs
• Notebooks
• Textbooks
• Laptop
• Palm
• Meds
• Umbrella
• CDs, blank and recorded
• DAT
• Sheet music
• Earphones

That’s not mentioning the stuff that’s technically optional but that let me lead a normal life despite not having a locker on campus:

• Water bottle
• Gym clothes
• Protein bars
• Toiletries
• Sunglasses
• Cell phone
• Something to read on the train

On an average day my bag weighs from 16 to 20 pounds, sans laptop. And I don’t even bring lunch.

Luckily for me, I take the south-side commuter rail in, so I’m not affected. But plenty of students take the Orange Line, and they’re going to be in serious trouble. Even without a guitar or trombone.

So can’t we just carry this stuff without a bag for four days? No. Not really, no… No.