Lady Gaga & Beyonce Present the Importance of Scheduling & Phone Etiquette

I was walking to work this morning, reveling in the somewhat gray skies, a nice break from my general refusal to wear sunblock, therefore the additional slight sizzling of my skin each day, when suddenly Telephone by Lady Gaga, featuring Beyoncé began to play. I love this song, so I naturally started to dance and jam out a little bit as I was walking. It occurred to me just how hilarious the song is, however, given my current interpretation of it. One of the lyrics reads essentially “You knew I was free, so you should have made some plans with me, I’m at a party now, so I’m not going to answer your call.” It strikes me for several reasons.

Firstly, calendaring and scheduling is increasingly important among people of my generation. I put just about every thing I do in my calendar, even if it’s not something I’m going to show anybody else, it just helps me keep track of where I was and where I am going to be. I’ve either reached an era, or an age, in my life where most of the people I know are doing calendaring of some sort, even if it just involves having Google Calendar send reminder-texts.

The second funny thing about Lady Gaga’s declarations is that she (in the universe of the song, at least) has some friends who (to use the wording of Ke$ha) are blowing up her phone-phone. Maybe there’s something different about phone etiquette these days, but I was always told that if somebody doesn’t answer their phone, what you do is maaaaaybe try again in a half-hour if it’s so important, but generally you call, get an answering machine (or voicemail box, these days) and then leave a message. I think part of it is that a lot of people my age (Lady Gaga is only 23 months older than I am) tire both of leaving and listening to voicemails. I know a lot of people within four years of my own age (both older and younger) who instead of leaving a voicemail, will hang up when they realize they’ve gotten that far, and then try calling back again in a few minutes. Not only is this annoying, but it has the capability to be a little bit creepy too, and I’m left uninformed about what’s going on that would prompt the call in the first place.

Which brings me to my next mild annoyance about voicemails: A surprising number of people do not listen to voicemails they get before calling somebody back about something. Frequently enough, I didn’t actually want to have a long phone conversation with somebody when I called them, so leaving a voicemail was a perfect opportunity for me to convey my information to them, and then be done with it. Instead, they call me back a few moments later, just to tell me that they didn’t listen to my message, wanting to know what was up.

There are some people for whom I either don’t leave messages anymore, or for whom I tend not to need to, just because these people are very avid about their call history logs. And sometimes, I’ve learned it just works better to send a text message, which is an option that I do exercise more now than I did on my previous phone, just due to the number of texts I’m allotted in a month having increased, and due to my not being completely aware of everybody’s schedules.

This brings up another issue. Lady Gaga mentions in another line in the song that her having brought the phone was indeed a disastrous idea, and that she should have left it at home. Should she have? Probably — if you’re going out to party and you’re going with some friends, I don’t see any real reason to bring it, at least not if you’re in the kind of social group that I imagine that Lady Gaga occupies, and especially if she was going with a few friends in case anything had happened. I personally always bring my phone with me places, and am definitely always checking on it, but I would be quite unlikely to take a call in a club or at a party, and admittedly would be quite unhappy if somebody kept persisting in calling me in that situation enough times that I eventually did have to answer the phone, in order to tell them to stop calling.

I am sure there’s more to the issue, but those are just a few of the things that ran through my mind as the song played this morning on my iPod.

June 25, 2010 | No Comments »

Art Show

This post is way late, I know that and am ready to accept the consequences for it. But it’s something that’s fairly important, so I feel it deserves a little bit more treatment than I would have been able to give it any time between the actual show and now, now that finals and moving are done. An alternate post might be “In which I discuss my girlfriend as though she’ll never read this, or I am explaining her to people that don’t know her.”

Anyway, four years of Megan’s work as an art student here have recently come to a close, and I can’t say enough how proud of her I am. She’s not happy with her time here, and that’s reasonable, and there are indeed a lot of reasons for it. This school just isn’t the type you really go to intending to take full advantage of its good art program. It’s not. We have a good music program and a great business college and I’ve heard our college of engineering is really fantastic, but visual arts are pretty sorely lacking.

Visual arts, such as painting and drawing, not to be confused with visual communication, a business skill taught in the school of communication, of course.

This is something hat I didn’t really think about until Megan pointed it out to me, and it makes sense. The painting program shrinks each year and the majority of the other students in the program, as she’s mentioned, just aren’t interested in it. And so it was maybe her third year here that she began to really consider leaving, and halfway her fourth year she almost did, in an effort not to waste the time she could be spending doing exactly what she’s doing now, self-instructing, for free, and potentially with better feedback mechanisms.

It’s with that framework that Megan’s work, which typically centers around whimsical images of childhood, and in her third year started to get a little bit darker as a lot of the things in her life became more difficult. Her job was un-fulfilling, and her relationship with her roommate may be described as “strained” from time to time. She tended to do really good work though, and while I might not hang it in my living room, it has a lot of artistic merit and is technically really good.

With that in mind, it was surprising for me to see the process she went through for her senior show at the end of this school year. She started with some of the best works from the previous year or so, and started to expand on what began as a theme of childhood, having gone wrong. She then looked at a photo of her brother had set as a profile picture on a social networking site, which was of him as a child, sitting next to their grandfather. She loved it and immediately started painting it. I dont’ know if it was originally for the show, but after having started on it, her mind was almost immediately changed, as far as what to do for the show was. She was going to do specific memories from her childhood based on photos she had and had found at her mother’s house.

The transformation was fantastic. She set aside the gaggle of old paintings she had been meaning to use, and in total, painted fourteen new works in what works out to be just under three full (but short) months. Frustration set in from time to time, but overall, she was legitimately excited to do these paintings. The reactions from her family and friends who hadn’t seen any of the work she’d done (as she had done a fairly decent job of keeping the paintings off of the Internet) were fantastic as well. Everybody I spoke with at the show was thrilled that she’d done what she’d done, and I didn’t hear a single negative thing about the work she had on display. (Less important tidbits include the fact that Meaghan and I did the lighting for her part of the gallery, and that a good time was had by all at the reception.)

And so was the climax of four years of art education. I’m not going to be the judge of whether or not it was worth it, but I am going to say that while it may not have been as good as going to a dedicated art school straight-away, it was definitely a time of self-discovery for her, and my hope is that everything she’s done here has had a net positive impact on her as an individual. Right now, what I can say is that she knows what she’s doing next, at least for the next fifteen months, and while she won’t be here in his town, as I continue to work on my information systems degree, we’re going to be in as close contact as ever. Just… with computers or phones.

May 11, 2010 | No Comments »

What I Want You to Think of Me

From time to time I get feedback from one of my friends, coworkers or otherwise readers of the blog, or even just somebody with whom I’m speaking in person or over the telephone. The theme of this feedback is often that I speak and write “like a book.”

The brutal, honest truth here is that this is totally intentional on my part. I don’t know if it’s that I intend to sound stuffy, or if it’s just that I intend to write in such a way as to convey that I’m actually sitting at my computer, much like Kevin Costner in the 1983 Apple Lisa advertisement, or one of those guys in another old computer ad (PDF). You know the kind — they’ve got this guy sitting at the computer in question, and he is considering his science or business data very, very carefully. Like, he’s really serious about this stuff. And he’s sitting in the most awkward position, possibly using the mouse wrong. But man… science or business!

Yeah. That’s basically it. Of course, my vision is slightly altered from either of these. I see it as a situation where I’m sitting at the desk in my office, which is both minimalistic and fairly well-appointed. I have a fairly simple, but huge, desk with a lightly colored granite or granite-like countertop, glossy and smooth to make it easier to use a mouse. Floating in the middle left region of this large surface, which is probably four feet deep by six or eight feet wide, is my computer, which is a late ’80s or early ’90s desktop computer. I’m thinking of something similar to a SiliconGraphics Indigo2, a NeXTStation, or a Mac II series machine. Atop this desktop wonder is a glorious monitor, between sixteen and twenty one inches in diagonal size, and it’s naturally one of the most beautiful monitors available at the time. It matches the machine in question almost perfectly, of course. In front of the machine are a great keyboard and an acceptable and matching mouse.

Although a fairly great office chair is available, it spends much of its time docked in the corner of the room, hidden out of the way of the desk and the fireplace, which as the evening wears on and I lower the desk from standing height to sitting height, brings warmness to the room against the cool, chilling dusk, which peeks in from the large window, the curtain of which had been open just a sliver.

Although the height-adjustable desk is by no means a necessity, especially in the 1990s, It’s something I’d very seriously enjoy having around, especially given that it’s nice and I can sometimes focus better on my work on the computer when I am able to do something and draw my focus to and from the computer as I move around the room with freedom in order to refocus, or reference some printed material, or in the case of my current room/office with more than one computer, do something on another computer. Seriously though, will somebody buy me one of these?

It is also fairly common knowledge that I’m on the war-path against CRT monitors, especially large ones, and old, inefficient machines. So why do I want you to think I’m using a high-watt ’90s technical workstation and a giant CRT display? I think the presumption that I’m making is that this is either “1993 Cory that magically has enough money for a midrange UNIX technical workstation for the purpose of his illustrious writing career,” or “Cory who has discovered the best energy source, and is using this old UNIX machine as a beautiful front end to a small (or large) but far more powerful system, primarily because he can do it without worrying about his carbon footprint.” Also, American writers tend to be granted things like addictions, excesses and the like.

But please, don’t think of me as being addicted to anything, but you can think of me as a 1990s novelist with money to spend on a high end computer, if you’d like.

February 20, 2010 | No Comments »

Evangelist

Today, after my German class, as I was walking home (because I don’t have to go to PR332 today), I was stopped by an evangelist. She started off quite nice, “Hey, do you have a few moments to answer a few questions, they’re a bit philosophical,” she asked. “Sure, I like questions and I don’t have to be at class soon,” I replied. 

Evangelist

Evangelist

The questions started out fairly philosophical, but I could see very quickly where it was headed. “How do you believe we got here?” “As a species, as a society, or you and I specifically, here, to Flagstaff, Arizona, right outside Building 30 on the campus of Northern Arizona University?” I believe my actual answer was “I’ve read a few textbooks and taken a few classes that basically say we evolved from simpler creatures, but I try not to completely deny the possibility of a creator.

Overall, the conversation was not that bad, but I feel like she maybe went a bit too far, being a bit of a Converting Cathy. I felt a bit pressured and awkward during questions like “Have you ever looked at a girl. ever.” and “Have you ever told a lie, ever?”

To me, that’s just an attempt either to push my buttons, or to really pump up the guilt on the fact that I don’t actively follow the advice of the bible. My personal stance on it is I just need to do what I need to do here, and what happens in my after-life, if I should have one, is the business of whatever higher power, if there is one.

A kind and understanding diety would say “well, he’s been trying to be good, and he’s done a pretty good job.” Not “He didn’t stop his life to worship me. To the bad afterlife with him!”

Anyway… not to be too political or religious or anything, just a few thoughts.

September 11, 2008 | Tags: , | No Comments »

Lisp

By Wednesday and Thursday of last week, after having spent as much time as I had on the phones, at work, my voice was threatening to simply run away for awhile. A long Friday shift, or more on Thursday, and it probably would have. Over the weekend though, I managed to develop something much more interesting, and potentially much more worse. I now have a speech impediment, in the form of a really epic lisp/lithp. I think what happened is that my wisdom teeth are starting to grow in, and my mouth thought it would be cool for my tongue to apparently go crazy trying to feel up the new additions to the back of my mouth.  So it’s also hard to do things like spit water out of my mouth after I brush my teeth, and even chew some types of food properly. In general, it’s quite frustrating, and very embarrassing over the phone. I had to apologize to a few callers for my inability to speak properly, and was surprised to hear them say that they thought I was actually speaking quite clearly. Either I’m doing a better job than I am giving myself credit for, or the callers are just trying to be nice. At any rate, I feel like the problem has actually managed to get worse during the overnight. I wonder if it’s something that’ll become less evident as I actually speak aloud more often as the week goes on, or if it’s something for which I’ll really just need to rest my mouth/tongue. Seriously. What a weird  problem. Hopefully some sleep today fixes it. If not, I’m in for a super entertaining shift later on today, during the time of day when people actually call us for help.

September 1, 2008 | No Comments »
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