Dept. of Telecommuting

The astute among you will recognize that 'telecommuting' is a misnomer. I'm not at home here, but, instead, at UBC, which is empty save for me, the iMac upon which I took this picture, and the second-year guy who's taking the summer to write his thesis because that's the way his scholarship works.

My expression is intended to convey the pain of telecommuting, as least for me, an ENTP terribly suited to working in boxers, next to an open window, checking e-mail every ninety seconds, with a fridge of food downstairs and a million uninvestigated Web nodes spread out before him.

What's your Myers-Briggs type? I don't know. Why don't you take the online test?

Originally published on Jun 5, 2007

Dept. of stooped and typing

Um, if it's a cliche to be blogging in the Tim Horton's right next to a blogging conference, it's a new one.

Today is Northern Voice, which describes itself as a "blogging and social media conference." You'd think all these hip, connected people could come up with a name that sounds less like a souvenir shop at YVR, where tourists buy maple syrup, vacuum-sealed smoked salmon, and deep-green sweatshirts emblazoned with stylized loons.

Silly me, I woke this morning, ate a bowl of Raisin Bran, grabbed a coffee by the bus stop, and was out here 70 minutes before the thing started. I'm working on workaday time, obviously. I'm going to chill out here with a breakfastwich, or whatever they call them.

Oh, there's activity around the registration table now. I'll tell you what I see.

One overweight, bespectacled guy in a blue plaid shirt punching the air, animating a story. Star Wars blogger.

A half attractive girl in a black skirt with a slit, carrying a packing tape dispenser. She has a limp, though. Maybe she's a hot blogger.

An artsy-looking guy with tight jeans, bright orange Chuck Taylors, high feathered bangs, and a scarf. Emily Carr blogger.

Three girls behind folding tables: one's shifting from foot to foot, one's looking at a piece of A4, one's talking to the sort of older man that proliferate at Canadian universities (sorry, the conference today is at UBC)—kind bearing; red Gore-Tex windbreaker; longer hair, usually white; backpack with laptop inside. A kind of dorky intellectual yachtsman.

I gotta get over there. They're giving out the lanyards.

More to come.

Morning breaks on the newsroom

Backlog of three New Yorkers to read, plus the one retrieved from Waterhouse's car. Huge paper on 'representations of masculinity in the media' due Monday. I'm drawing a line from a colonial pamphlet, The Boys' Own Paper, to modern-day lad-mags like Maxim. While I'm spouting sociologica all weekend, I want you to do something that makes your cheeks ruddy.

Vows and covenants II

I now understand my grammarian streak as something I abhor in my father, namely, his desire always to know where his hammer and screwdriver are, and to have his electrical cord, the one that attaches to the Weed Wacker, rewound perfectly after each use and returned to its home behind the extension ladder.

His lust is for the placement of objects; mine is for punctuation. Until recently, I didn't realize they are essentially the same thing. It was an unhappy discovery.

But, hey, if the giddy nihilism of your twenties isn't followed by sad realizations, then you're not really dying, which means that you weren't really alive.

Caring about grammar and keeping a tidy workbench are both moral, of course—something goes here, not there, for no reason other than that it should, and the pursuit is driven by a fear that the world would unhinge if people didn't care about these things.

All of this, gentle reader, is preamble to my point. I went to a lecture last night with Trois Heures. We heard a woman speak about Iran. Interesting talk, blah blah blah, then thoughtful questions and one denunciation from an intense bearded man.

All night the speaker—Deborah Campbell, a writer and UBC prof of literary nonfiction—used "media" as a singular noun. The media is growing in influence. The media is censored.

To my ear, it's ugly in the same way as "There's three chairs over there"—forgivably, avoidably, uglily. Then there's the question What does 'media' actually mean?

Here's what the experts say:

American Heritage: Maybe "media" refers just to the press and broadcasters...
Dictionary.com: The singular use is now common in mass communications and advertising.
OED: "Media" is the plural of "medium."

In this fractured and fizzing information landscape, can we really get away with thinking of the media as a monolith?

Next, we tackle he, she, they, ze, and, gulp, hir—unassigned singulars. Let's wait till we're drinking wine.

By the way, have you seen the Phillips-head? It should be in the cupboard in the garage.

(Illustration: The shield of St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes. Is that a pen?)

Ward the King

Stephen Ward, the big dog, the director of the School of Journalism.

I like the guy, let that be said—although it's not for peons to like kings. My feeling runs nearer to trembling awe, so different is the power we wield.

Which is why I've started compiling a list of the weird words he uses. They sound correct, but each time I hear one, I mouth it mentally to myself and promise to look it up.

There were five in our first Press and Society class:
—"issue," pronounced to rhyme with 'miss you';
—"genre," pronounced ZHAHN, like 'John' in French, without the fluttering 'r';
—"propagandic," which should be the name of a hip hair salon;
—"periodicy," which I suspect is missing a couple of letters; and
—"censorial," which I think should be "censorious"—'in a mood to censor.'

It's hard enough getting through the dense vocab in academe without your profs riffing, Miles Davis-like, on the language, no? Then again, maybe he's Cajun or something.

Let's see what the OED says.

Issue
((j)u, sju) Looks like he's on solid, if slightly poncey, ground on this one. Pushing out that 'y' sound purses your mouth. One for the bossman.

Genre
(r) Nope, he should definitely be licking the 'r' at the end. One-one.

Propagandic
(Rare) Pertaining to a propaganda or to propagandism. Bugger, thought we had him here. The more common usage is 'propagandistic,' which the OED has as "given or inclined to propagandism; devoted to the propagation of doctrines or principles."

Funny, I'd never noticed the 'pagan' right in the middle of that word. I wonder what pagan propaganda would look like. "Barbecuing ON A SPIT is a SOCIAL GOOD," maybe. Two-one, Ward.

Periodicy
There are no results. The nearest alphabetical match is displayed in the side-frame. Good. I think he was looking for 'periodicity,' or "the quality or character of being periodic; the quality of regular recurrence; tendency to recur at (esp. regular) intervals. 2. Recurrence of a woman's periods; menstruation." Two-two.

Censorial
1. Of, pertaining to, or characteristic of a censor; 2. Of persons: Like a censor; censorious. Wow, I was almost sure that was a mistake.

I'm undone at the end, and the professor snakes the victory, three-two.

Screw it: I've heard him say "orientate" twice. Call it a tie.