escapistdispatch

Apple's Translation Widget: Totally Useless

2007-04-15T20:50:00.000-06:00

The other day, I saw that Daring Fireball had linked to Pierre Igot's criticism of Apple Mail, and it reminded me of another app that is rendered nearly useless by an idiotic interaction design: Apple's translation widget.

I have a number of friends with whom I correspond in Spanish (I lived in Argentina for a few years), but occasionally I forget a word and need to go to a translation dictionary to look it up. There are several websites that perform this service adequately, but when I first heard about the translation widget, it seemed like the perfect solution: rather than opening a browser window to travel to wordreference.com, I could simply switch to the Dashboard, translate the word, then switch back. And I still feel that this would be a great solution, were Apple's translation widget not so terrible. Observe:

Notice that there is no "translate" button to click once you've typed your phrase into the first box. That little squiggly arrow is NOT a "translate" button, though you might think so upon using the widget for the first time (doesn't the arrow suggest conversion from one language to another?). No, the squiggly arrow actually switches the order of translation, so that Spanish would instead be translated to English.

So once you've typed in your word, what do you do? Press return? Unfortunately, no again. If you press return, the cursor simply drops to the second line within the input text box.

This leaves the user in a bit of a quandary. If neither clicking the one button in the interface nor pressing return will cause the translation to occur, then, if you are like me, you will become frustrated with the program and give up.

Some time later, you may return to the Dashboard, only to notice that the widget has done its work and translated the word. If you happen to type in a new word, however, the widget again becomes unresponsive.

This is tremendously frustrating. Not only is the widget incapable of completing the one task it was designed to do, but it doesn't even offer you a button to click repeatedly to relieve your irritation. There isn't even a status message saying "searching", so there is no indication that the widget is even working. In situations like these, I find myself typing dirty words into the input text box. It's futile, though, because the translation widget doesn't translate those, either.

It seems that Apple, in some quest for utter simplicity, has decided to forego a "translate" button in favor of an instantaneous response, a la the Spotlight button or the search box within iTunes. The problem, however, is that the response is nowhere near instantaneous--it can take as long as ten or fifteen seconds to see a translation, depending on how recently Dashboard was opened, or whatever arcane factors determine how quickly Dashboard runs. It's mysterious to me. I have a fully loaded MacBook Pro, so I can't blame the speed of the machine here. It seems that Dashboard in general can occasionally slow down, which pretty much destroys the whole benefit of being able to switch instantly back and forth to it ("BOOM", as Steve Jobs would say).

And the size of the dictionary seems to be pretty disappointing, as well; it apparently knows fewer words than I do, and by no means am I a master of Spanish:

The translation is "padrastro", if you must know, which is incidentally the same as the word for "stepfather".

This reminds me of another problem: when the widget can't find a translation, which seems to be more often than not, it simply repeats the same word in English. This is unhelpful. In a language like Spanish, many words happen to be the same, or very similar, in both languages, so the user is left wondering whether or not there was no translation, or whether the Spanish word was simply the same as the English one. As in:

Clearly, a status message would be useful for words that the dictionary can't find. May I suggest "No translation found."

The clincher is that the results that the widget returns give no context to assure the user that she is seeing the correct translation. Anyone who is fluent in a second language knows that there are simply too many possible erroneous translations to blindly trust one. It is absolutely necessary to see an explanation of the context. For example:

This makes no sense in Spanish; the translation uses the word for "tear" that refers to ripped cloth.

So, even in the event that you can coax the widget into giving you a translation, you still have no way of knowing whether or not it's the correct one.

Three Weeks in Pursuit of Angela From Accounting

2006-02-23T17:02:00.000-07:00

MY DATA-ENTRY JOB at the law offices of Wilson, Spiegel, & Prestwich was always meant to be a temporary thing, a stopgap until my accordion playing took off and started to pay dividends. I figured I’d stick around for six months or so, maybe, and learn some computer skills while I saved up enough money to record my demo and build up enough of a local following to make the accordion a full-time affair. As temporary jobs go, it wasn’t so bad; we had free donuts in the break room, casual Fridays, and I could shoot the breeze with Copy Room Gary whenever data entry got to be a little too tedious. The most visible attraction, however, was Angela from Accounting. She was, I felt, the kindest and most beautiful co-worker I had ever had, someone I felt a real affinity for and a potential for a lasting, meaningful relationship, and so it was with no small degree of regret that I got her fired.

I first met Angela when I needed to fill out my paperwork to get on the payroll. She was predictably beautiful, with straight dark hair and dark eyes, and I did my best to make the most of the situation.

Angela: Joel Salisbury? Just fill out this W-2 and the confidentiality agreement, and we should have you ready to go in just a few days.
Me: You know, doing data-entry is really more of a temporary thing, for me. I’m an accordion player, and as soon as that starts to take off…well, let’s just say, it’ll be ‘sayonara, suckers’ to Messrs. Wilson, Spiegel, and Prestwich, esquire.
Angela: I’m sorry, did you say ‘accordion’?
Me: That’s right. You’re a fan?
Angela: No. I mean, not that I know of. I guess I just didn’t realize that there was much of a market for accordion players.
Me: Yeah, I think there’s a lot of untapped potential out there. I mean, how many guitar players are there? They’re a dime a dozen. But for us accordion players, the playing field’s wide open.
Angela: Interesting. Just sign here, and you’ll be all done, Joel.
Me: The accordion can be incredibly expressive, you know.

After that, we’d see each other in hallways, or in the copy room, or at staff meetings, and I’d make a point to chat her up as much as I could. The Salisbury charm is legendary, the sort of thing that drives women to deep throes of passionate longing, and I have to say that it was in full force in Angela’s presence. It was only a matter of time, I felt, before I’d win her over. She was a few years older than me, and had returned to school to study fashion design, after getting her degree in English. She attended one of the local art schools here in Chicago, and from what I could tell, she really felt like she could make it in the world of fashion design. Once, she opened here desk and showed me some of the drawings she’d been working on, and they looked pretty good to me.

It was at one of these schmoozing sessions over at Angela’s desk that I accidentally spilled my coffee all over her accounting paperwork. I had been demonstrating a particularly vigorous accordion technique, and bumped the mug that I had set on her desk, and when I tried to catch it, I ended up knocking it completely over. As the coffee began to soak through her stack of billing reports, she just sat there, watching. I think she was in shock.

Angela: This was two weeks of work, Joel. We have to get everything finished for our tax returns by the end of the week.
Me: Here, let me help with that [reaching for a tissue and dabbing ineffectually at the coffee].
Angela: Just go away. I’ll take care of it.

I felt bad about making Angela stay overnight at work to re-do her paperwork, but I had a performance later that evening at a restaurant that offered live music, so I couldn’t really afford to worry about it. I did, however, perform an accordion rendition of “Don’t Dream It’s Over” by Crowded House, which I dedicated to her. It struck just the right sort of plaintive, wounded tone, I thought, although it didn’t seem like the audience really understood what I was trying to accomplish.

Later, I asked Copy Room Gary what I should do to fix things with Angela. More than anyone else, he had his finger on the pulse of the office; secretaries would stop by for paperclips and share the latest gossip, paralegals would come in to get motions duplicated and would chat for a few minutes, even partners would talk a little bit about their lives while they were waiting to pick up a fax. I asked him if he knew if Angela was mad.

Gary: I don’t know. I heard Carol gave her a pretty hard time about having her paperwork in late.
Me: That’s what I was afraid of. What do you think I should do?
Gary: Maybe you should send her a note. When I do something that makes my wife mad, I leave her a little love note with flowers.
Me: [hugging Gary] You, my friend, are a genius.

I figured I could do Gary one better—I had Angela’s email address, so I looked up an “I’m sorry” e-card, composed a heartfelt little note, and sent it off to her. It would, I was certain, brighten her day and turn her frown upside down. After sending off the email, I waited anxiously at my desk for her response. She walked by a few times, and I tried to give her a little wink, but she avoided eye contact with me.

A few minutes later, though, I saw Angela coming out of Carol’s office, and it looked like she was wiping tears from her eyes. How, I thought to myself, could she be sad at a moment like this? She had just received a hilarious and unexpected email from myself, with a heartfelt note of apology. A little later in the day, I was able to get the scoop from Gary.

Gary: I guess Carol had stopped into the accounting office, and Angela was checking her email, and all of a sudden this loud obnoxious music started playing from her computer. Well, Carol turned to Angela—you know how she is about people reading personal email on company time—and just totally laid into her. She said that her behavior lately had been sub-par, that issues in her personal life were infringing on her ability to work, and that she was going t0 have to put Angela on probation.
Me: …

This latest development, I could see, was going to be difficult for even the legendary Salisbury charm to smooth over. I needed to pull out all the stops. It is at times like this, when lesser men would tuck their tails between their legs in defeat, that a Salisbury shines the most. I knew what I would have to do. I looked up Angela’s address in the company directory.

That evening, in the bushes outside Angela’s house, I tried to formulate the best plan of attack. It was quite cold, and the accordion straps were pinching my shoulders. I could see a light on in the upper story window, and when I saw a shadow move in front of the light, I took a deep breath. I stepped out into the open, and began tapping out the bass notes to U2’s “With Or Without You.”

Say what you will about the accordion, but if you were to hear me that evening, you would have been brought to tears. Never had I played so soulfully, never had my voice been so clear and so true. It was, in a word, stirring. It could have turned the godless heart to religion. As I sang, I saw a figure come to the window and lift it open.

Angela: Joel, is that you? What on earth are you doing here?
Me: I won’t be rebuffed, Angela. All I want is to express to you the feelings in my heart.

The silhouetted figure moved away from the window, and a minute later, Angela came out of the front door. To my surprise, she wasn’t alone. She was accompanied by, of all people, Barry Spiegel of Wilson, Spiegel, & Prestwich. I was confused.

Angela: Joel, you shouldn’t have come here. I don’t know what you were thinking.
Me: Um, sorry? I thought you’d be alone, Angela. Wait a minute…are the two of you on a date? I thought you were married, Mr. Spiegel.
Barry Spiegel: [punching me in the nose]

In the end, I think it probably turned out for the best. Angela never did go back to work; I think she and Mr. Spiegel decided that if it came out that they had been dating, it would just cause too many problems at the office, and then Mrs. Spiegel would find out, and it would probably be easier for all involved if the two of them just broke off their relationship. As for me, I stayed until I was able to get my last paycheck. After that, I decided that it was too much effort, hiding behind the file cabinets every time Mr. Spiegel walked down the hall. I tried to call Angela on the phone a few times to invite her to my performances, but she always hung up on me. Even this didn’t dampen my spirits too badly, however; they say that the best accordion music is made out of heartbreak, and if I was ever going to hit the big time, I’d be needing some material.

With Extreme Prejudice.

2005-12-03T02:17:00.000-07:00

I went to see Pride & Prejudice this past weekend. This would not have been my first choice, to say the least, but when one attends movies in the company of women, these sorts of things just happen.

It didn’t do me any favors, however, to take my girlfriend to the movie. If anything, it only served to irritate her about our own relationship. To give you a short sampling of our post-movie conversation:

Jessie: I really liked that movie a lot. It was very romantic, don’t you think?
Me: Yeah, I guess so.
Jessie: Don’t you like that? When things are so romantic?
Me: Hmm…
Jessie: Don’t you think you need to be more romantic?

The funny thing about the movie, though, is that I did find myself wishing that I were a little more like Mr. Darcy and a little less like Mr. Wickham. Generally, I am unaffected by romance in movies, and can scoff at it with an air of superior irony, unmoved by its sentimentality. The Notebook? Boring and predictable. Return to Me? I was able to bear sitting through it only by gouging myself repeatedly in the eye.

But there I was, watching Pride & Prejudice, of all things, and I found myself enjoying it immensely. This is not an easy thing for me to admit. It seems I have my own pride and prejudice, as it were, when it comes to this sort of movie. But there is a scene when they are standing in the rain, having an argument, and Elizabeth tells Darcy, “You are the last man in the world that I could ever marry,” and it was at this point that I realized that, against my better judgment, I cared deeply about what was going to happen between these two fictional individuals.

The thing is, nothing happens in the movie that is a particularly original plot device. Some variant or other of the plot can be found in nearly every romantic comedy produced today. So why did I care about this one? I think it was for the same reason that Elizabeth and Darcy fell for each other: because they both see, in that moment in the rain as they argue, that the other is a good, decent, honest individual, and each can’t help but admire the other. True, they are stubborn and willful, but they are also brave and upright, and as I watched the scene, somewhere in the cold and shriveled place that is my heart, something moved.

This same emotion, I realized—the admiration of courage and strength in an honest and uncomplicated individual—is what I enjoy most when I read a good book or watch a good movie. I like it when a movie is funny, or clever, or thought provoking or inventive, but I find I am most deeply moved when the movie portrays good people doing the right thing in hard situations, without regard for the consequences. This is what the best stories are all about. I know it sounds simplistic, but I mean it from an artistic standpoint, not a moral one. Faulkner talks about it when he mentions the “problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing.” It’s what David Foster Wallace means by the “myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story.”

And this is what, finally, sets Pride & Prejudice apart from all of the other romantic movies that I can’t stand to watch: the protagonists love the goodness in each other first, and are in love with each other second. This idea may not be found in most literature, but it’s found in the best literature, and I’d like to believe that it’s found in the best of us.

Microsoft Word Auto-Complete: Get Your Hands Off of My Writing

2005-09-27T11:03:00.000-06:00

So anyway, I was writing something for a job application, and I began a new line by writing,

Take

as in, "Take a moment to something something something." But this is what Microsoft Word's Auto-Complete suggested for me:

....

AS IF I NEEDED HELP TO THINK OF "TAKE CARE." THANKS A LOT, MICROSOFT. I mean, first of all, how many times when you write "take" is it because you are going to write "take care?" Maybe once out of every 100 times? 200? Even if we're talking about the times that you begin a new line with "Take," it can't be better than one out of 10, can it?

And let's just say, for the sake of argument, that I had been meaning to write "Take care." It just makes me feel slimy to think that my computer is giving me little hints on what heartfelt things I can say to end my letter.

Auto-complete is probably Word's most hated feature. Because, most of the time, it changes something from how we intend it to something entirely different. And even when it does guess right, the user is usually surprised, and spends a few seconds trying to figure out what just happened, thus losing the 0.5 seconds that would have been saved by auto-completing words like "care." And in the worst-case scenario, it will make changes (numbered lists, I am looking in your direction) that the user then has to battle for ten minutes to get them to look how he wants them to look rather then what Word decides the user must have intended.

In Defense of Burnt Aqua

2005-09-09T00:23:00.000-06:00

Ever since Apple released iTunes 5 yesterday, it seems like every blogger has taken the opportunity to jump on his or her high horse and complain about how the look of the application is a departure from Apple's Human Interface Guidelines. "Why do you torture us so?" they ask, as if having to face one more application whose windows don't look like all of the other windows was going to make them cry. It's seriously getting out of control how much is being made of this.

The argument goes, I guess, that if Apple goes and changes the look of every application, that "the HIG will have no meaning," and that once Apple sees fit to change the look of each application, it's a slippery slope to the point when developers, encouraged by their loose interpretation of the HIG, will head out and use, willy nilly, whichever design suits their fancy. Which would result in usability being damaged for the average user, who apparently gets confused when applications look different.

Can I just say, I don't mind at all that they look different? I realized this looking at the screenshot posted over at Ditto. It's supposed to show just how insane it is that there are so many different looks for windows, but when I saw it, the thing that occurred to me was, "That's really cool." Each application has its own look, which is logical, considering they all do different things. Why should an internet browser look exactly the same as music editing software? Don't designers try to use familiar physical metaphors, like buttons and desktops? So shouldn't the look of their app be tailored to fit what it does? Are all these rhetorical questions bothering you yet?

The key, I think, is that they share the same visual cues for the functionality that is the same between them. It is confusing when some applications quit when you close a window, and others don't. It would certainly be a problem if the little buttons for closing or minimizing a window started to look different. But if all of the applications behave in the same way, then it's not obnoxious to me at all that they look different. In fact, I like being able to pick my Mail.app window out of out of a cluttered stack of windows. If they all looked the same, I'd have to really look at it to know that it wasn't iTunes or Safari. I can see just a little corner of my GarageBand window peeking out from behind all of my other windows, and I still know it's GarageBand. That seems to me to be a pretty good (and useful) accomplishment.

As for the threat of developers who don't know anything about design suddenly feeling liberated to throw together bizarre, unusable applications, their apps always looked like butt. They were ugly in aqua. That's why nobody uses them. So let's stop complaining about apps that look good.

Roger Ebert, You Are Old, But Funny

2005-08-05T18:24:00.000-06:00

For some time, I have been a fan of Roger Ebert's movie reviews. I think he generally gives the movies he sees a fair shot and writes in an honest and engaging way about them. And one thing I've especially enjoyed are the captions he puts beneath the movie photos at the beginning of his reviews.

Observe: In his recent review of The Dukes of Hazzard, we see the following caption:

Jessica Simpson, Johnny Knoxville and Seann William Scott wear clothing in a scene from "The Dukes of Hazzard."

Or another of my favorites:

Amanda Peet and Ashton Kutcher simulate an emotion similar to love in "A Lot Like Love."

Seriously, who writes these? Do you think Mr. Ebert does them himself? The reason I like them is that critics generally just go with the default blurb as a photo caption, but Ebert makes the effort to come up with something clever. And at most newspapers there is probably some grump whose job it is to make sure that nothing goofy like this will ever get published, because it is not the mark of a "serious" publication. But seriously. These are funny.

There really are a whole bunch of them, and I think if you went and searched through the archives, you could probably find a bunch that were really funny.

Here are some more that I've noticed:

Angelina Jolie and Colin Farrell looking a bit uncomfy in Oliver Stone's sword-and-sandals epic "Alexander."

Steam is created from nothing more than heated water in "Steamboy."

I love that the humor is subtle, too. It's not like "HA HA HA LOOK AT STUPID COLIN FARRELL LOL!!!" or anything. This kind of thing just cracks me up. Thank you, Roger Ebert, and may you live one thousand years and write one hundred million more photo captions. You have made the world a happier place.

Manifesto #1

2005-06-16T23:33:00.000-06:00

The easiest way to cut through pretensions in one’s own personal aesthetic is to analyze those works that one would never admit to liking. Try it. Think of a book that you’re embarrassed to admit that you like. Don’t try to deny that you have one.

In my case, I have an unhealthy liking for children’s literature. This is a little embarrassing for me to say, but the truth is, if I were given a choice I would rather read the Newberry Medal winner over the National Book Award winner any day. It’s not that I don’t enjoy more “adult” literature, because I read it all the time, with pleasure. But there is a feeling that I get when I read children’s literature that I don’t find nearly as often reading books targeted at an adult audience. It’s kind of a giddy, joyous feeling at being completely absorbed in another world. I’m sure you’ve felt the same at some point. The interesting thing is, most readers I know say that they were most moved by books during their young-to-mid teen years. I have thought at times that this had to do with that particular age, that perhaps there was some biological reason having to do with surging hormones, but the more I read, the more I think it has to do with the books that we were reading. Children’s literature has a kind of purity, an innocence that can be totally convincing. For this reason, in twenty years, no one will remember The Da Vinci Code, but people will still be reading Harry Potter.

The power of these stories, I think, lies in the fact that they are purely escapist works. By this I mean, they have no ulterior motive other than to tell a good story, simply. They aren’t meant to persuade or to flatter the reader, to teach him or to put forth a certain agenda. I can think of very few exposés or persuasive essays in the body of children’s literature. But this is not to say that they don’t deal with serious or meaningful topics; rather, they focus exclusively on the most meaningful of topics, that of how to be a good human being.

Of course, I am being very simplistic here in my analysis of children’s literature. But I think it’s true that for the most part (at least in the best works), they tell of good characters doing mostly good things in mostly bad situations. Like Ender of Ender’s Game, they are bright, strong, good people who try to do the right thing. And one of the results of that is, not only does the reader find himself admiring the book, but he admires the characters in that book, and sees the best parts of himself in those characters.

Which leads me to my point about writing in general: character is what makes a story work. And for the story to be truly affecting, the reader needs to not only believe the characters, but to believe in them. This is the difference between books that stick and books that don’t. I’ve read many books in the past year that I’ve forgotten, but I still remember the moment, a year ago, when I read the last page of Jonathan Lethem’s The Fortress of Solitude. This is not a children’s book, but it tells the story of young Dylan Ebdus, who grows up in 1970’s Brooklyn and struggles daily to fit in as the only white kid in his neighborhood. He is a character who you love and admire, and even thinking about it now, I get that little feeling of satiated giddiness that makes me want to go out and force other people to read the book.

That’s the kind of stuff that keeps me reading: the book genuinely affects the reader, knotting itself into one’s soul. I want a book to affect me so deeply that it causes me literal suffering to know that other people still haven’t read it. I remember when I first read A. J. Cronin’s Keys of the Kingdom, how for weeks afterwards I’d steer any conversation to the subject of that book, so that I could encourage others to read it. I was a zealot, really, and I think the analogy to religious conversion is the truest one. Good writing should turn you into a believer.

I have personal feelings about which artistic devices are more effective than others. I think character-based humor is much funnier than one-liners, and I think that character drama is more fulfilling, if harder work for the writer, than situational drama. But in the end, I think, the true criterion of a worthwhile piece of writing is how deeply it can touch its readers. Period. Whatever artistic devices the author does or does not use, I think, are secondary concerns. These seem to me to be problems of style rather than substance. Certainly they are important decisions for the author to make, but I think that ultimately, they should be dictated by the overall goal of the work.

Maybe I’m being overly optimistic, but I think if writers were to always follow that guideline, they’d be less likely to produce work that was overly sentimental, or pandering, or formulaic, or any of the qualities that irritate us in writing. Because if a writer wants to tell a story in a lasting, meaningful way, his only recourse is going to be to write truth. And writing that expresses truth is going to reach and reward readers that are genuine and honest at heart.

That’s the feeling that I want people to have when they read my writing. Writing this, it’s clear to me how far I have to go before I get there. But at the very least, I think you know where I’m coming from—I read what I enjoy reading, and I write what I hope others will enjoy reading. Not in a transitory, page-turning, diversionary mystery-novel sort of way, but in a way that makes the reader care more about the characters in the story than he does about his own extended family. Stories that, at 500 pages, you wish wouldn’t end so quickly, that make you skip class and stay awake until 3 a.m. the night before a test. Stories that tell about love and hate and God and everything that we as humans care about. To me, these are the stories that mean something.

A Short Essay on a Favorite Song

2005-05-06T09:19:00.000-06:00

An essay I wrote was posted over at McSweeney's today.

Making the Muse Be Your Monkey

2005-04-23T00:45:00.000-06:00

I came across an article from the New Yorker by Louis Menand today that had some great insights about writing.

Although it starts off as a review of Lynne Truss' ubiquitous new book, Eats, Shoots, & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, it soon becomes clear that the point of the article isn't so much to discuss the book as to use the review as a launching pad for a meditation on what makes writing good.

Some bits I found interesting:

One of the most mysterious of writing's immaterial properties is what people call “voice.” Editors sometimes refer to it, in a phrase that underscores the paradox at the heart of the idea, as “the voice on the page.” Prose can show many virtues, including originality, without having a voice. It may avoid cliché, radiate conviction, be grammatically so clean that your grandmother could eat off it. But none of this has anything to do with this elusive entity the “voice.“

The reason this resonated for me was that, more than anything, voice is what keeps me reading. If the voice of a novel is irritating or unconvincing or unoriginal or simply nonexistant, I can't force myself to finish a story. All other factors are irrelevant. Maybe I was able to when I was younger, but now I derive almost no pleasure from reading something that doesn't personally create a voice for me. And when a piece of writing does have an engaging voice, it can keep me riveted, at the expense of food, sleep and personal hygiene.

I also liked that Menand discards the myth that voice has any basis in truth, in the sense that it should sound the way the writer sounds in real life:

Wisdom on the page correlates with wisdom in the writer about as frequently as a high batting average correlates with a high I.Q.: they just seem to have very little to do with one another. Witty and charming people can produce prose of sneering sententiousness, and fretful neurotics can, to their readers, seem as though they must be delightful to live with. Personal drabness, through some obscure neural kink, can deliver verbal blooms.

This is the truth. It's a good thing writing exists, I think, for the sake of all of the terribly boring people whose fascinating thoughts we might otherwise never know.

For this reason, however, it's easy to think that authors may choose, in writing, to invent a persona that they can't be in real life—they can seem funnier or more intelligent or charming than they are able to convey by other means. After all, if people could be as interesting in real life as they can be on the page, then writers would all have thousands of friends and would therefore never write. But Menand argues against the idea that a writer consciously invents a “persona.” Rather, he sees it as something less manufactured: the Voice either comes or it doesn't on its own.

To this I can add my own experience. Everything that I've written that, to me at least, has seemed to work on some level, always had as its source that little spark of inspiration, the germ of something that seems to come from another place. The process of extracting that idea, of developing the germ once it has made its appearance, is for me an intensely pleasurable one. Characters speak to each other on their own and plotlines develop themselves. And the times that I have attempted to just pound something out (especially in the case of fiction) without waiting for the Voice to make its appearance, I have invariably been disappointed by the results. Talk to any writer worth reading and they'll tell you the same thing. Those who don't believe in magic probably never had it.

So how does a person make sure that the Voice shows up more often? Menand doesn't really address this question, but in my case, it seems to wait until the absolute last moment that I need it, and then comes about an hour and a half later. For this reason, I love deadlines. The more deadlines I have, the more of a nervous wreck I become, but I also feel more alive and productive, because, even if the Voice comes late, it nearly always does arrive. The goal, I guess, is to give myself as many deadlines as possible and hope that the people that depend on them will forgive my unreliability. Another good technique for getting the Voice to come around is to give myself a lot of unrelated projects to do, and then shirk my responsibility by writing instead. The kiss of death for creativity, at least for me, is to have a lot of free time when it would be perfectly convenient to write.

If the Voice is so patchy, is he really worth pursuing? For those of us who believe in the power of writing, and who truly love to read, it goes without saying. The Voice is the glimmer of a personality behind the words on a page, the paradoxical evidence of magic in language. It's what's human about a book, what makes you love a character and feel like you know him. It is what makes it, in Menand's words, "more painful to stop reading than it is to keep going." The least I can do is listen when he comes around.

Fiction: The Umbrella

2005-04-22T00:49:00.000-06:00

I don't typically steal from little old ladies in wheelchairs. As a general rule, I make a special effort to be kind to the elderly, given the bad rap they get these days. In fact, I like to think of myself on the whole as a “good” person. I don't take office supplies from work. I volunteer occasionally at the Special Olympics. On polls or survey questions, I usually tell the truth. So I think we can establish that it would be altogether uncharacteristic of me to accost a sweet old grandmother in her wheelchair, wrest an umbrella from her clutches, and flee.

The woman had no business owning an umbrella like that. A vintage Romanelli 1915 pagoda with paisley print is the Stradivarius of antique umbrellas. Romanelli himself made less than a hundred, each bearing his trademark flair for mother-of-pearl inlay along the shaft, the swirls twisting and looping into the camel-fur handle. The canopy of the pagoda is made of the finest imported Chinese silk, hand-dyed in Romanelli's own painstaking method. At auction, the umbrella can sell for as much as $20,000. Now, I'm not saying that any of this justifies what I did, but hopefully you can understand where I'm coming from.

I work as a computer programmer for a company that builds machinery to feed chickens. Chicken farms are almost fully automated these days, and the machinery that feeds them several times a day needs software so that the farmer can control when and how much he is feeding them. I don't write that program. I write the program that controls the machinery that kills the chickens when they are ready to be eaten. I hate my job.

When people ask me if I'm dating anyone, I don't want to seem pathetic, so I tell them that I just broke up with my girlfriend. It's been three years now since we broke up. We dated for two weeks. They were the best two weeks of my life.

So I collect umbrellas. There are stranger hobbies. Collecting has always appealed to my need to organize things, and umbrellas in particular were a narrow enough specialty that I felt I could become an expert in at least that one area. I come home from work, eat from my cartons of Chinese takeout, listen to music, and study umbrellas. There are probably only a dozen people in the United States with a more thorough knowledge of vintage umbrellas than me. And, after three years of dedicated effort, I've amassed a very respectable collection. I've scoured nearly every antique shop in seven states, and so far, I've found four pieces that are especially good, two original LaDuke ruffled parasols, a jeweled Carver, and a double-layered plaid from the mid-19th century. But the Romanelli is in another league. Most collectors are lucky to see even one in their career, because of the sixteen that are known to still exist, only two are on public display. The discovery of a Romanelli is an epic, life-defining moment, one that will make its owner a minor celebrity among collectors and forever divide his life into two periods, Before Romanelli and After Romanelli.

Which is why, on that overcast day as I walked from work to the bus stop, that little old lady appeared to me not as a ninety-year-old puttering down the sidewalk in her motorized wheelchair with an umbrella on her lap, but as a beautiful shimmering goddess surrounded by hosts of angels singing praises, come to bestow on me her sublime gift. Her name was Ramona.

“Excuse me, what's your name?” I said, my voice quavering.

“Ramona. What do you want? You're in my way,” said Ramona.

“I...couldn't help but notice your umbrella,” I said. I was at a loss for words. My ears were ringing, and I suddenly felt faint.

“Could you please move?' said Ramona. “You're blocking the whole sidewalk.”

I knew I needed to act quickly, or the opportunity would be lost. “Sorry,” I said. “It's just that I collect umbrellas. And if I might be so presumptuous, I'd like to buy yours. I'd be willing to pay quite a lot of money.”

“Not for sale,” said Ramona. She had black, sunken eyes, like pits in a dried apple. “I need it for shade when I'm sitting in my garden.”

My stomach lurched at the thought of the umbrella being exposed to the sun's rays. Fortunately, it appeared undamaged. “No, you misunderstand. That umbrella is worth far more than you might think. I'd be happy to buy you another umbrella if all you use it for is shade.”

Ramona was unmoved. “Well, that would be fine if I wanted another umbrella, but I don't. Now, please move.” She pressed forward on the controls, and her wheelchair bumped against my legs.

I could sense that I was losing control of the situation. “Please,” I said. “Just wait a moment and let me explain. I've been looking for years for an umbrella like yours.”

Immune to my pleas, Ramona managed to maneuver her wheelchair around me, and I jogged at her side to keep up. It moved surprisingly fast. At this juncture, the sense of impending disaster had become almost unbearable. In my mind's eye, I saw myself years later, recounting with bitter regret the story of how I had been so close to obtaining an original Romanelli, and my entire being revolted at the thought. I saw the umbrella sitting on Ramona's lap, and my arm reached out, as if disembodied, and grasped the umbrella. A short struggle ensued, and Ramona's grip proved stronger than her appearance might have indicated. However, I finally managed to pull it free, and at that moment, I did what anyone in my situation would have done, and ran.

It is entirely possible that I would have beaten a world-class sprinter that day. My feet seemed light, my legs springy, and my muscles taut, as the city around me blurred to streaks of color. I arrived home a few minutes later, and slumping into my chair, I was able to examine the prize in my hands at length. It was real.

Later that evening, I was watching television. The umbrella was resting on my coffee table, but since I'd brought it home, I had avoided putting it with the rest of my collection. I had as much right to it as Ramona, didn't I? At least I cared about it, which she obviously didn't. A piece like that belongs in the hands of a collector. If she still had it, it would only be a matter of time before it ended up pawned off or sold at a garage sale, neglected and damaged.

I flipped the channels to the local news, and a familiar, shriveled face looked out at me like a dried apple, the sunken black eyes burning into my soul.

“Where were you when your umbrella was stolen?” the correspondent asked.

“I was driving down the sidewalk in my wheelchair,” answered Ramona. “The thief just grabbed it right out of my hands, and ran off.”

Unbelievable, I thought. Don't they have any real news to cover in this town? I thumbed through the latest issue of Umbrella Enthusiast, noticing that there were several display racks that would nicely complement the Romanelli.

The reporter was asking Ramona another question. “Now, why do you think anyone would do that sort of thing?”

“I don't know. That umbrella has been in my family for years, and my mother told me that I was to give it to my daughter. Now, I guess she will never have it.” Ramona's lip quivered, and a tear glistened in her eye.

I rolled my eyes. As if anyone would believe that sob story. She used the umbrella for shade, for God's sake. It was clearly in better hands now.

The program then cut to a shot of Ramona's middle-aged daughter, who went on for another thirty seconds about how society had become hopelessly degenerate lately, and how she was going to apply for a concealed-weapon permit to be able to protect herself. “I know the umbrella was worth a lot of money,” she said, “but what hurts the most is that it meant so much to us as a family.”

This is too ridiculous, I thought. As I was reaching to switch off the television, the newscast cut to a police officer, thickset and mustachioed. “We've got several promising leads,” he said. “You can't just steal something in broad daylight in downtown Newport, in front of several eyewitnesses, and expect to get away with it. Whoever the thief is, he should know: we will find him. There's no question about that.”

I felt sick to my stomach.

I couldn't sleep at all that night, my thoughts full of large uniformed men chasing me down in motorcycles and forcing me to give up my umbrella. The following day, I stayed home from work. At around noon, the phone rang. I hesitated before answering. What if it's the police? I thought. Is that how they do it? Do they just call you up and tell you to come in for some questions? I picked up the phone. It was my mother.

“I'm so glad I caught you at home,” she said. “I just wanted to tell you, I was watching the news last night, and I saw a story about a sweet old lady who had her umbrella stolen! Can you believe it? What kind of person would be so sick? My bridge partner was telling me, she thought he must be some kind of pervert. I can imagine this sort of thing happening in Montpelier, but here in Newport? Unbelievable. Honey, are you still there?”

I gurgled something about being terribly sick and hung up the phone.

A few hours later, my doorbell rang. I managed to pull myself upright and shuffled to the door. Through the obnoxious sunlight, I squinted at a group of children asking for donations.

“We're here representing the Buy a New Umbrella For Ramona fund,” the oldest said.

I closed the door and returned to my spot on the carpet to lie down.

By evening, I had resolved to do something about the umbrella. It was still resting on the coffee table, and its presence had become intolerable. I found myself wishing that I had never seen the Romanelli, that I had been unscathed by its curse. It was with deep regret, but also a certain wistfulness, like hearing a beautiful symphony and knowing that I could never again hear it for the first time, that I slid the umbrella into a garbage bag and put it into the back seat of my car.

I pulled into the museum parking lot. It had begun to drizzle, so I tucked the package underneath my arm to protect the umbrella from the rain. The girl who worked at the front desk had red, spiky hair, and was disarmingly attractive. She was reading a book, Tuesdays With Morrie.

“What's up?” she asked, looking up from her book. She had a pierced eyebrow. Suddenly my previous plan of simply turning the umbrella over to the museum to be properly cared for seemed at best underdeveloped.

“I brought in a...” I said, searching for the right word. “Donation?”

“That's great,” said the spiky-haired girl. “And what are we going to do with your bag of trash?” She looked up at me, bemused. She wore a black zippered jacket.

“This isn't really trash,” I said. “Rather, it's an umbrella.” I could tell by her squinting eyes that my explanation was not achieving its desired effect. “Well,” I said, “it's really a very valuable piece, and I thought you might want to display it here or something.” I held the bagged umbrella out at arm's length, hoping she would take it.

Brow furrowed, her arm rose to receive the umbrella I was handing to her. She stopped. A look of dawning comprehension came over her face. Her eyes widened, and she smiled and shouted, “Ha! You're totally the umbrella thief! You're the one who stole the umbrella from that old lady in the wheelchair.”

I stammered. “That's preposterous,” I said. “I...don't know what you're talking about.” I looked around, wary of any museum patrons who might be passing by.

The girl burst into a fit of uncontrolled laughter. She was beside herself. She rolled off her chair onto the floor, her giggles echoing off the cavernous halls of the museum. This was not at all what I had intended to happen. I was relieved that she hadn't called the police, but this turn of events did not exactly put me at ease.

“Shhh,” I told her. “People are trying to look at art.” An older man looked around a corner to see what was happening. The girl had tears streaming out of her eyes. After a few minutes, she managed to compose herself enough to return to her chair. She wiped the tears from her face with her jacket sleeve.

“So,” she said. “Let me get this straight. You stole an antique umbrella from an eighty-year-old woman in a wheelchair, and now you're trying to give it back? To a museum? By just walking in and handing it to me? You, my friend, have serious problems.” She settled back into her chair and looked up at me, smiling, one finger playing with the bright red hair behind her ear.

I was unsure of how to proceed. “So...does that mean you'll take the umbrella?”

“No, we won't take it! Do you think I'm an idiot?” She leaned forward in her chair. “But they say this thing's worth thousands. Can I see it?”

I soon learned that by “see,” she meant “hold,” as she opened and closed it vigorously, testing its mettle. I pointed out that the umbrella was not a thing to be manhandled.

“What makes this umbrella so great?' she asked. “I've got my own right here, and it works for me.” She held up a common black umbrella. “By the way, my name's Samantha.”

“Samantha,” I repeated, conscious of her brown eyes looking directly into mine. “Well, there are a number of details, starting with the handle. If you look here along the inside of the curve, you'll see where Romanelli personally signed and numbered it.” But Samantha was no longer listening. She was rummaging around in the desk drawer, and pulled out a large magic marker.

“The Unicorns are going to be in town tomorrow night,” she said, taking my arm and using her teeth to pull the lid off the marker. She leaned over the desk and began writing large, black numbers on my skin. “This is my cell phone number.” Her hair smelled like fruity shampoo. “Call me, and we'll go.”

“I...” I began, but found myself unable to complete the thought with Samantha standing so close to me.

“Here's your umbrella,” she said, handing me the garbage bag. She smiled. “Now get out of here before I call the police.”

I stepped out of the museum's front door and hurried through the rain to my car, umbrella in hand. Putting the key into the ignition, I tried to gather my thoughts. I still hadn't managed to dispose of the umbrella, but I remained optimistic. And Samantha was certainly intriguing. I glanced again at the phone number she'd written on my arm. Maybe I would call her. It would be good for me to get out of the house for a change.

I lifted an edge of the garbage bag to look at the umbrella, at which point I discovered that it was no longer a Romanelli. That is, sitting in the bag on the seat next to mine, there was not the vintage masterpiece of a brilliant craftsman, but an ordinary black umbrella. The rain surged, thudding against the roof of my car. I wondered if Samantha still wanted to meet me for the concert.

An Open Letter to Brian McKnight

2005-04-19T14:11:00.000-06:00

Dear Mr. McKnight,

Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to read this letter. I understand that you have precious few moments to read letters from people such as myself, so I will therefore be brief.

I am writing in regards to your hit song, “Back at One,” for which you made millions and millions of dollars. Now, I would never quibble with your lyric intent—as a contented fan says on the Amazon.com website, “Brian Mchknight’s [sic.] Back At One, in my opinion, is one of the top five albums of the nineties.” But I was hoping that you would clarify the meaning of the chorus for me, as I have yet to completely decipher it.

It appears that the chorus, if not the entire song, follows the standard format of a counting song, in that each line begins with the counted number (one, two, three, four) followed by the step that the narrator intends to follow. The first line, “One, you’re like a dream come true,” I understand to be a simile in which your narrator attributes a kind of metaphysical well-being to his object of affection. And the second line, “Two, just want to be with you,” continues with an expression of the desire that she inspires in the narrator.

By the third line, “Three, Girl it’s plain to see, that you’re the only one for me,” you have clearly established this pattern—the listener now has the expectation that each number will correspond to a reason, if you will, that the narrator’s girl is the only one for him. Now, line four is where I get hung up. In it, you sing. “Four, repeat steps one through three /Make you fall in love with me.” It seems here that you are treating lines one through three as if they were steps that one could follow. But if you remember, step one was, “One, you’re like a dream come true,” which seems to be more a statement of fact than a step, indeed, a step that if followed, would make the girl fall in love with the narrator. Lines two and three only further the confusion. How could one repeat the step “Just want to be with you,” or even “Girl it’s plain to see, that you’re the only one for me?”

I’m sure you can imagine my concern upon hearing this in your song. If I, for example, had a girl that I felt was the only one for me, and wished to emulate your narrator’s methods in an effort to make said girl fall in love with me, then where would I begin? “Repeat steps one through three,” your narrator mockingly tells me, as I vainly attempt to carry out step one, “you’re like a dream come true.” Certainly you would admit that no girl has ever been made to fall in love with a person for simply “wanting to be with [her].” This I can say from sad experience. I can only imagine how many impressionable young fans have rehearsed these steps, believing mistakenly that because it is plain to see that a girl is the only one for them, and because she is, to them, a dream come true, that she will somehow fall in love with them. This is absurd. You, Brian McKnight, have deceived us all.

Thank you for your time. I can only hope that in your future songwriting efforts, you will strive for more internal consistency.

A Concerned Listener,

David Anderson

About Me

2005-04-18T14:51:00.000-06:00

My name is Dave Anderson. I am a student at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, where I am studying physics.

Physics alone, however, does not begin to encompass my ambitions. Oh, no. I also love karaoke. And I try to read as much as I can, even to the detriment of my schoolwork. And I have, like most people, tried my hand at becoming a rock star. Feel free to write me at yowzadave@hotmail.com.

About

2005-04-17T23:15:00.000-06:00

This website is a tiny collection of experiments, gathered here only because I had nowhere else to put them. There will be no regular publishing schedule, and it's likely that the most recent post will be the last. Read at your peril.

All email can be sent to yowzadave@hotmail.com.