Blessed by the Potato

Dear Jason, I saw Forgetting Sarah Marshall some time ago. I liked it, but the part that really made it for me was the vampire puppet musical at the end. So I was really surprised to see a clip explaining that it wasn’t just a scene for the movie, but a whole musical you were earnestly putting together on your own.

You said Judd Apatow told you to never show it to other people, and I am writing to say fuck that guy. There are numerous YouTube clips of you performing that musical number in various venues and people love it. We need to see the whole musical! There are far too few undead puppet musicals these days, it is definitely an under-served market.

So maybe not in Hollywood, but Toronto has played eager host to such off-the-wall musicals as Evil Dead the Musical (front four rows are in the “splatter zone”) and I think your Dracula puppet musical would fit right in in that city. Or go the Dr. Horrible route and just do it once and record it for the internet and DVD sale market. The few songs we’ve heard are actually catchy and fun and I’d love to see the rest.

Please do it!

On another note, I love the look of child-like joy and wonder on Jason Segel’s face when he’s performing with the puppets (and in the muppet movie trailer – “are there muppets in this movie?!”) In fact I even think there would be a market for a one-man show “Jason Segel sits on stage with a look of child-like joy and wonder on his face.” Maybe not a market for expensive tickets, but it wouldn’t be an expensive show, either.

I was just informed that Google intends to force G+ accounts to use “real” names, and in enforcing that policy has even gone so far as to delete other Google accounts with a pseudonym (even your Gmail!).

I’ve written before on anonymity and pseudoanonymity, saying:

That brings up a very good question of what it means to be anonymous these days. Is Lady Gaga anonymous? Madonna, Mark Twain, Prince, Robin Hobb? […] Is “Potato”? Sure, we don’t use our real names, but how much would our “real names” mean, anyway? There’s definitely a distinction between the fleeting anonymity of user213 leaving a comment on [a] blog with a dummy email address and then disappearing into the ether never to be seen again, and the pseudo-anonymity of CC or Potato, Gabe or Tycho, Yahtzee: established personas on the intertubes, with consistent messages, accountability (at least as much as if I was blogging with my real name), the ability to be contacted and engaged in dialog with. I publish under both my real name and Potato, and I daresay I’m better known and more widely read as Potato, with a longer track record (going on what, 13 years now of BbtP?). I would be more anonymous if I used my real name.

A name-brand source of information, opinion, ranting, and hilarity.

So I don’t think the “brave enough to be anonymous” ad hominen is warranted or fair. The internet seems to be growing up and moving away from pseudo-anonymity, but it’s still there (just as it is in “real” publishing) and I think it’s important to distinguish between actual anonymity and a nom de plume.

Anonymity contributes to the Greater Internet Fuckwad phenomenon, but I do see value in pseudonyms. It can give an asshole psychological permission to act like a giant asshole, but it also lets people make poignant comments or tell moving, important stories without fear of what impact those tales may have on their day-to-day life. For whatever reason they have: just shy, out of character with their other work, or because they live in a politically dangerous situation where their words could hurt people (including themselves). I liked the anonymity of the early internet: sure, there were ultra-jerks and flamebaiters and megatrolls, but there was also a culture of reasoned people who spent more time reading the message than the from field. It didn’t matter who your father was, what country you were from, how you earned your money, or if you were a 16-year-old high school kid: if you had something good to say, people listened.

Besides, I’m not sure that real names really solve the anonymity problem — I got through over 30 search results for my other name before I stopped counting, none of whom is me, and there are many more out there across the world who don’t rank highly in search engines. If I chose to be a troll, would my real name really remove that barrier to human interaction that leads people to say things they never would directly to a person’s face? I’d still be effectively anonymous.

They’re right in that it probably would help, at least a bit: prank calls went down after call display became popular, but they didn’t go away completely (just got one last week). Trolling would probably be reduced with some sort of real ID system, but I think that there’s value enough in some aspects of anonymity/pseudoanonymity that it should be kept. For example, should a LGBT teen in deepest darkest born-again country be forced to use their real name to join an online support/chat group? What about corporate whistleblowers? Or just people whose lives are interesting enough that they have secret obsessions they’d rather not have come up in an internet search (e.g.: LARPers)?

Moreover, G+/Facebook are the *last* places that need to enforce such a policy, since you have such tight control over your circles/lists. You should know who you’re adding: either the man behind the mask, or the nature of the invented persona (troll or not). Anonymous or not, if there are trolls bothering you on G+ or Facebook, odds are you approved them.

[Note that I’m being somewhat unkind here in not mentioning the good arguments for why a lack of anonymity may improve the internet experience for most]

Update: a nice op-ed about the issue, and how allowing (initially, anyway) pseudonyms was precisely what set G+ apart from Facebook, and may be a part of what’s made it so successful so quickly. [HT: LG]

My officemate went out for lunch and had Lamprey. I remarked something along the lines of “ugh, it’s a parasite!” “No, it’s fish!” Well, a parasitic fish!” which lead to looking it up to find out what it does eat.

I had to recoil at the picture of that gaping toothy maw in the picture. “That thing gives me the creeping horrors.”

The creeping horrors, I explained, is a complex and terrible feeling. Not just that it frightens me, but that I am quietly disturbed somewhere deep in the foundations of my self that such a creature exists in the real world, and is not merely the product of a sick mind in a horror movie. Indeed, that such a terrifying visage is so mundane that my friend just had one for lunch. It’s a slow, insidious feeling of subtle horror that gradually eats away at a person from within, at first a mere tingling of disquiet in the back of the head that the universe may not be such a friendly place after all, and ending with all rational thought submerged beneath quivering black jelly of pure evil.

I was just sitting here thinking about all the different ways I love grant writing. I mean there’s…

…er…

Ok, not much at all to love.

Well there is that unique state of mind, a seemingly impossible superposition of terrified and stressed into pulling your third all-nighter, while also being bored out of your skull. But the word I would use to describe that would not be “love”. (It’s actually pretty similar to thesis-writing).

I understand the need to justify why you should get money to do research, but it’s a pretty frustrating process. It takes a tonne of time since these grant applications are usually huge (even just doing scholarship apps earlier in my grad school days used to take up a full two weeks out of every year), yet the success rate is quite low, on the order of 10% (or worse!). So it’s especially frustrating to sometimes get rejected and find the reviewer’s comments were, well… stupid. Like they didn’t even read the proposal, or didn’t understand the point of the competition, or created a list of tiny nit-picks, but the criticism was enough to not get funded anyway.

I would much rather just give a 2-hour or whatever presentation to the grant committee, especially since it might let them ask questions, avoiding arbitrary denials due to a reviewer skimming a grant and missing a point, or misunderstanding something. Though I do appreciate that with the low success rate (small amount of funds compared to applications) they seek any reason to burn an application, it is just so disheartening to see a month’s worth of work (and the next 3 years of funding) go down the drain because some reviewer phoned it in.

Anyhow.

There was a little discussion at some other blogs about how we do science. I don’t want to comment too much right now since I don’t really have any good suggestions on how we should structure science, but something does need to be done, at the very least in the personnel department: as discussed on the other blogs, the post-doc system doesn’t really work. We shouldn’t be penalizing people for trying to put down roots and stay in one place, indeed, in other fields that’s called experience and is considered a virtue. I’m attracted to that idea of a scientist position: like a post-doc, where you do science on a day-to-day basis and aren’t a professor/group leader, except an actual job, with security, benefits, living wage, a place in the organizational structure (rather than a not-student not-employee), and a future. I can’t say though if that otherworldly romantic notion is at all practical, or how we get there from here.

If you’re reading this, then we’re saved. The world has not ended, despite the recent predictions of some. Macho Man Randy Savage died to save us, by keeping Zombie Jesus in a headlock through the appointed hour. Thus every year henceforth, followers of this sect will celebrate Macho Mania on or about May 21 (Canadians may do double-duty with Victoria Day), to celebrate the Macho Man’s sacrifice for all. Ooooh yeah.

Of course, others believe that the prediction was nonsense to begin with, so little to no supernatural mercy can be ascribed to Saint Savage. Potatoism (the way of the Holy Potato) does not contain any explicit teachings on eschatology, no hints as to whether the world will grind to a halt in the freezing darkness, be consumed by flames, drowned by unstoppable seas, or devoured by ravenous zombie dinosaurs — and has certainly provided no sell-by date for the planet.

So yeah, either no danger to begin with, or our continued existence is owed to an unlikely hero’s struggle in the hereafter. Either way, life goes on, and the devout have their new hero, and the rest of us have an excuse to party and eat slim jims in the nice weather of early spring (any recommendations on vegetarian slim jim alternatives?).