Jason Iverson Is Dead

Posted on 09 Aug 2016 by Frank Moraes

Some twenty years ago, living a life so radical and subversive that it fills me with anxiety just to think of it, I met Angela Ellingson. We were infatuated with each other, I suppose — although not in any sexual way. We were more like 5-year-olds on the playground who thought each other very keen. But friendship had clearly bothered my girlfriend at the time (later my wife) and her boyfriend at the time (later her husband, it would seem). We were kindred spirits: militant, bookwormish, and broadly curious.

Her boyfriend Jason Iverson, was also a friend of mine. He took on mythic proportions in my fiction. He was interesting and intelligent, but what fascinated me about him was his day-by-day control of a life that was, by my way of looking at things, out of control. Where I hid from troubles Jason confronted them and generally prevailed. He was the kind of man that I’ve always wanted to be like. Or at least more like.

Jason Iverson Died

Two years ago, I wrote, “There are few people from the past I want to have any contact with. But I wouldn’t mind hearing from Angela or Jason.” So when I joined Facebook, I looked up Angela. Her last post was on 11 April 2015 and it read, “Happy Birthday Jason, I miss you.” That was ominous. So I clicked over to Jason’s page where the last post was on 20 September 2014, written by Angela:

I know many of you already know this as Jason and I shared many friends, but not all. Jason died on Monday, September 15 from complications from being hit by a car while crossing the street of Friday the 12th. I am not going to continue his Facebook page forever as I think that is kind of creepy but I wanted his friends to know what had happened. He apparently had a blood clot that reached his brain causing a stroke while he was asleep, but as he wasn’t being monitored it wasn’t noticed immediately. He was resuscitated but he as he was without oxygen for 17 minutes after it was noticed he was in distress, he was brain dead and his mother and I had him removed from life support as he was already gone.

Senselessness

It seems inconceivable to me. Jason was always “the man.” How could such a thing happen? Although it does have resonance for me. I often tell people that drivers are trying to kill me as I walk about. It is meant as a joke. But to most drivers, pedestrians are like insects flying across the street: nothing to worry much about. As a result, I’m hyper-vigilant. When you are a pedestrian, you are in a war zone. What I mean by my little joke is that you should treat drivers as if they were trying to kill you.

I’m extremely sad that Jason is dead. And that it should have happened due to something I worry about excessively, makes it all the worse. He was a musician who I never got a chance to play with, and now I never will. Now I’ll never even talk to him, although I do remember our last conversation where he related an amazing true story of his life.

As for Angela, it must have been — and probably still is — crushing. They were together 23 years. I’ve never managed much more than a few years in any relationship.

Image of Angela Ellingson and Jason Iverson taken from Facebook, licensed under Fair Use.

Pot Stickers and Cervantes’ Six Teeth

Posted on 08 Aug 2016 by Frank Moraes

I was frying up some pot stickers. Why? Well, I don’t feel well. And steamed pot stickers, while doubtless much better for me, are edible but hardly delightful. And as I was frying these things, I had to flip them each two times. That’s because they have, roughly speaking three sides. And every time I flipped them, I was lightly splattered with very hot oil.

Now before anyone starts writing comments about how I can flip my pot stickers without burning my hands, let me tell you: I know. Feel free to send in your best tips, but don’t think me such a fool that I am unable to do so. The reason that I don’t take precautions is the whole point of this article.

Pot Stickers Aside: Facebook Rant

(Well, the actual point of this article is to see if the ridiculous amount of work I did trying to get my posts to display automatically on Facebook worked. I’m not that hopeful. I find it interesting that in a day, I’ve received 9 “post engagements” on Facebook but not one single click. This, I take, as an indictment of Facebook and humanity as a whole. As I’ve long said, Facebook is just a photo sharing site, and that’s quite right. I’m amazed that people post images with statistics that don’t go along with links to the actual data. But I digress.)

Thicker Skin and Cervantes’ Teeth

So there I am frying up my pot stickers and having my hands lightly burned and not caring. In fact, I hardly even noticed. But it occurred to me, if I had been doing this when I was 8 years old, I would be crying. Over the years, physical pain has doubtless dulled my senses as well as my perception of the pain. And so we come to what I think of as real men, like my father, who seem to deal very well with pain. It must just be that over time, these men had gradually grown what is, in the pot sticker case, a thinker skin.

This reminds me of Cervantes. In the prologue of Exemplary Stories, he mentions that he had only six teeth “in bad condition and worse placed, no two of them corresponding to each other.” The great writer was doubtless exaggerating. But I’m sure that he did have rather bad teeth and had a number of them pulled without benefit of Novocain. Is it possible his last tooth extraction bothered him as much as the oil splashing on my hands? I suspect so.

I’m not concerned that people will consider me a wuss. One of the greatest pleasures of old age is learning not to care what people think of you. But it makes me feel better about the people who came before me who suffered so much. I want to think that it wasn’t as bad for them as it sounds to us.

Update

It worked! It worked!

Pot Stick Image by Andrea Nguyen. Licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Cognac Is Brandy?! You Don’t Say!

Posted on 21 Jul 2016 by Frank Moraes

I saw a curious article in Forbes titled, 6 Things You (Probably) Didn’t Know About Cognac. Okay, okay, okay! I admit everything! I couldn’t stop myself from clicking on it! But here’s the thing: I didn’t click on it for my usual reason: that I think I’m so knowledgeable. The truth is that I don’t know much about cognac other than that it is the only kind of widely available brandy that is at all drinkable. And that it comes from Cognac, France. And, of course, that it is regulated by the government like the rest of the French alcohol industry.

No, I was struck by the parenthetical “probably.” The article is, after all, in Forbes. And I suspect that the sort of person who reads Forbes thinks of themselves as pretty sophisticated. So throwing the “probably” in the title is a sop to their more insecure readers. The truth is, I was expecting to learn some things from the article. And I did! For example, I found out that cognac is rated from worst to best as: VS, VSOP, XO, and Extra.

Cognac Is All About Quality

This explains something that has been bothering me. I recently bought some cognac and I found that I didn’t like it as much as I remembered. So I just checked the label, and it is VS. I’m used to VSOP. So there you go!

But I was shocked by this line in the article, “It’s basically brandy.” Well, I can’t say that I knew that, because it is wrong.

But I was shocked by this line in the article, “It’s basically brandy.” Well, I can’t say that I knew that, because it is wrong. Cagnac is brandy. The statement in the article is like saying, “The Porsche 918 Spyder is basically a car.” I would assume that anyone who had ever tasted cognac would know that it is brandy. I’m not very aware of the outside world. Yet even with my tenuous grip on reality I am able to discern that it is brandy based upon my amazing ability to taste food and drink.

Forbes Readers Are Ignorant Snobs

Then it hit me: of course readers of Forbes would be surprised to learn that cognac is brandy. So surprised, in fact, that the article has to hedge on this fact. “It’s basically brandy.” If you look at a bottle of Hennessy, you will not find the word “brandy” anywhere. In the past, I’ve drunk cognac, not because I have a special fondness for it but simply because it was the best brandy that was readily available.

But for the Forbes set, it is probably a big deal that cognac is this thing that is expensive and thus good. For them, it is categorically different from brandy. So I image the editors concerned about this. “If we just say it is brandy, we’ll get angry letters!” But the most interesting thing about this is that for the Forbes reader, the fact that cognac is brandy probably was one thing they didn’t know about cognac. And it’s very sad. Or hilarious. It depends upon your perspective.

Exercise, Weight Loss, and Your Perfect Weight

Posted on 20 Jul 2016 by Frank Moraes

Will sent me a video from the Vox folks, Things We Can’t Explain: Donald Trump’s Board Game. I think he thought it was just a comedy video. And he’s right: it is funny. But there’s Ezra Klein and Dylan Matthews. It’s fun to see them, and the video is worth checking out. But it led me to another Vox video, The Science Is In: Exercise Isn’t the Best Way to Lose Weight. I’m pretty sure I read the article when it first came out, so I wasn’t shocked. Just the same, the video had a greater resonance with me, since I had a recent weight loss.

Up until about 7 years ago, I was very skinny. I mean, very. I tried not to see my naked torso in the mirror because it reminded me of victims of Auschwitz. I mean, it wasn’t that bad, but it certainly brought back childhood memories of watching that Alfred Hitchcock documentary about the liberation of the camps and the horrors discovered. But about 7 years ago, I put on 50 pounds rather suddenly. And since then I’ve stayed at that weight consistently. It is easier to see myself in the mirror now.

Weight Gain, Weight Loss

But I wasn’t happy about the weight gain. I would have wished for something more like 25-30 pounds. So over the years I have changed my diet and exercised — all in an effort at weight loss. Nothing really happened. This wasn’t surprising. When I was skinny, I tried to gain weight, and experienced a similar lack of success. My body, it has always seemed, wants to be whatever weight it is.

Then, last week, I was walking over to my healthcare provider. I noticed that I had to keep pulling up my normally quite tight jeans. And sure enough, I found that I had lost about 10 pounds. I figured that my recent efforts to walk more (just to get away from the computer) had acted as a weight loss program without my noticing. But no.

It’s All About the Thyroid

My sister reminded me that I was on thyroid medication. Indeed I am! Three months ago, a blood test showed that while I was mostly in good health, my thyroid was greatly under-performing. A normal range is up to 4.5, and I was at almost 20. And two months later, on the medication, it is exactly where it should be: right about one. And this is undoubtedly why I lost weight. I’m sure that I’m back to a stable weight again.

One reason that exercise doesn’t help much with weight loss is because your behavior and metabolism change as a result. I know about the first part of that. When I used to exercise a lot — running every day — I ate a lot more. I wouldn’t doubt that my metabolism also slowed down during the rest of the day when I wasn’t running.

Exercise Can Help!

There is, of course, a great reason to exercise. It makes us feel better. It improves our attitude. It calms us. And maybe in that way, exercise can help with weight loss: by making us not care.

It reminds me of a poem by Kristen McHenry, “Perfect Weight.” I can’t find the book right now, but I did find this snippet (that I quoted), which contains the important part:

You will kneel to bless the dead
hive of your pelvis. The body
is an intermission; wait for the toss
and hurl of rebirth. Emerge, sanctified and black.
Hover above the scale; note
the number. This is your perfect weight.

Weight loss, I fear, is a capitalist plot.

Yanosuke Hirai and the Heroism of Unreasonableness

Posted on 05 Jul 2016 by James Fillmore

You may be thinking, “But it wasn’t the earthquake that caused plant failure, it was the tsunami!” You are a clever soul. Nuclear power plants are designed to shut down in the event of an emergency, and Fukushima did. However the fuel in a nuclear reactor does not stop emitting radiation after a reactor is shut down. They need coolant to prevent a chain reaction which can result in great damage.

Cooling Nuclear Plants

This coolant is usually water, which is why nuclear plants are usually near a major water source (ocean, lake, river.) The coolant needs to circulate through the fuel, and it does so through electric-powered pumps. Should electricity fail, the pumps stop working.

Of course, power plants have backup systems for this, and so did Fukushima. When the severe earthquake interrupted power service, backup generators kicked into operation. They would have been sufficient to keep coolant flowing. But the tsunami which followed, ruined most of these backup generators.

The plant had a seawall, which was at the legal height mandated by Japanese regulatory agencies. And the tsunami completely overran the wall. The power company was eventually found liable for insufficient emergency protocols. However, a tsunami wave higher than ever seen before can’t be predicted, right?

Wrong.

Yanosuke Hirai

North of Fukushima (closer to the quake’s epicenter) was the Oanagawa nuclear plant, operated by a different power company. It faced a similar tsunami wave; its sea walls held, and the plant was not dangerously harmed. In fact, several nearby residents whose homes had been destroyed by the tsunami stayed at the plant site as a refugee center.

The hero who saved that plant was a long-dead man named Yanosuke Hirai.

Hirai was a senior engineer with the power company. As a boy, he visited the town of his birth, and in this town was an ancient Shinto shrine. Legend had it that the shrine was affected by tsunami flooding in a terrifying 869 CE earthquake. Supposedly, Yanosuke Hirai never stopped thinking about that visit.

Demanding More Than the Minimum

When the Oanagawa plant was built, Yanosuke Hirai insisted on a higher elevation and higher seawall than other engineers thought necessary. The design team at Fukushima actually lowered the plant’s elevation during construction, for the logical reason that closer to the ocean meant less cost pumping the water uphill.

“Corporate compliance is different from compliance. Just being ‘not guilty’ is not enough.” —Tatsuji Oshima

After the 2011 disaster, a Portland Oregonian reporter who’d lived in Japan for years, read about the Oanagawa plant, and tracked down Tatsuji Oshima, Yanosuke Hirai’s former underling. Oshima said Hirai’s obsession with safety was always a huge battle he fought against institutional inertia, and Hirai considered bureaucrats to be “human trash.”

The reporter, Richard Read, wrote that this would be almost unheard-of in Japan, a “society known for pounding the nail that sticks up.” And Read has lived among our friends on those lovely islands, so I defer to his judgement.

But I’d be surprised if it’s a Japanese issue. As Oshima said to Read, “In your country, too, there are probably bureaucrats or officials who never take final responsibility.” What a gentleman! “Probably” is quite the polite understatement.

Going Along, Getting Along, Catastrophe

Humans are tribal, and I believe it to be a flaw of confirmation bias. We are learning creatures by nature. When an infant finds that some shiny thing hurts (a candle flame), they try it another time or two, then tell themselves a story: “candles hurt.” These stories, by which we identify patterns and try to rationalize them, are how we avoid unpleasant experiences in the future. And some patterns are well worth identifying. (This is how science works.)

But it can lead us into confirmation bias. We tell ourselves a story about what we experienced — a unexpectedly rude stranger, a bad coworker, a toxic relationship, whatever. And we look for a pattern which confirms our story about why that experience happened. When you look for examples that confirm your suspicions, you will find them!

Perhaps the oldest trick in magic is the “cups and balls” routine. Most magicians do it and everyone has their own version. Penn & Teller’s version involves doing the trick “straight” and then using clear plastic cups and having Penn explain exactly what they are doing as they are doing it. The trick still works because we look where it is natural to look. We look at the big man juggling the little balls, not the the little man placing a big ball under a cup.

People see what they expect to see.

Dangers of Confirmation Bias

In institutions, confirmation bias tends to create environments where the “right sort” of people are welcomed and given enormous leeway. The “wrong sort” are seen as untrustworthy, scrutinized for examples of “not being a good fit.” Which naturally confirms the bias! The “wrong sort” leave that unpleasant work environment, the “right sort” stay where they’ve found a place. This is largely why a problematic institution — say, a hospital with a history of patient neglect, or an energy company that pooh-poohs safety concerns — can be exceedingly difficult to change.

Clearly, Yanosuke Hirai was the “wrong sort.” He was unquestionably brilliant, but a pain in everyone’s neck. He was not a “team player.” And yet the company hiring him got someone who would ultimately save them billions of dollars. And the company without him is now liable for billions in damages.

There’s an inherent problem with capitalism here. The company which tolerated Yanosuke Hirai’s squeaky wheel didn’t see benefit from the decision until decades after his death. And I don’t know how to solve that problem. Companies always claim to want “outside the box” thinking, currently fashionable corporate gibberish. What they want is someone who’s creative, without being really creative — disruptive without actually disrupting anything.

So let’s salute a man who never quite belonged, who considered the closed-minded to be “human trash,” and who took heroic stands ultimately benefiting thousands of lives. Thank you, Yanosuke Hirai!

Image of Yanosuke Hirai by Zsefvgyj (own work), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikipedia.

The Speed of Life

Posted on 01 Jul 2016 by Frank Moraes

I know you must all get tired of these articles where I whine about my life. But I think this one is a bit different and more interesting. It occurred to me today that what I most hate about my life is the speed of it. What is the point of it all? I understand that everyone has to work. But we all run around doing mostly pointless things. We do bad work — quickly.

For a month now, I’ve been wanting to write about two translations of Don Quixote. The first is by the painter Charles Jarvis and the second is by the novelist Tobias Smollett. The latter is the better known of the two, and is still published. In fact, the Barnes & Noble Classics edition uses the Smollett translation. The problem is, it is almost certainly not a translation. He seems to have just taken Jarvis’ translation and rewritten it.

To write about that properly would take days — many days. There are certainly at least a few PhD dissertations in it. I’m sure I could get a very long article just comparing one chapter. And that would be a worthy use of my time, even though very few people would be interested in reading it. It’s not like the “Smollett ripped off Jarvis” fact hasn’t been well established. Indeed, in 1949, Samuel Putnam wrote, “The version published by T G Smollett in 1755 merits little consideration as it is merely a working over of Jarvis.” But there is much to be said for doing something worthy at a leisurely pace.

A Sudden Opportunity

The funny thing is that after thinking this all day, I got the opportunity last night when the power for the entire neighborhood died. At first, I was frantic. But once I found the candles, I realized it was quite a blessing. I got one of my Jarvis copies out and started to read, laying on my couch. It’s hard to read by candle light, but that made it even better. It forces you to read slower and you can savor every word. And just as I was really getting into it — Ta da! — the power came back on.

And the world went back to its normal frenetic pace. I had to finish an article for work that had to be done fast. (If I’m writing it, it’s because it has to be done right away; about the best turn-around time is three days for a freelancer for reason that really have nothing to do with them.) And there were several other things. Plus, there was Frankly Curious, but you know: nothing really good or anything. This, as a matter of fact.

Pointless Speed

It wouldn’t matter if we were at war. Or working at a hospital. In fact, I tell my writers that when they screw up, “We run a website, not an ER.” But that really is the problem with the modern world: we treat everything like it’s life or death. I have a friend who works for ComCast — or whatever they call themselves now. And he works enormous numbers of hours. And when there is a big launch, he works even more hours.

And why? Really! I want to know. It isn’t life or death. It isn’t even profit or loss. It’s more or less profit. We have the technology to allow everyone to live meaningful, fulfilling lives. But instead, we all run around like some kind of bizarre organic perpetual motion machine. It’s not a machine that does anything of much value. It’s more like a hamster on a spinning wheel.

We’re crazy. We are all crazy.

Hamster on spinning wheel by Doenertier82 at the German language Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikipedia.

On Seeing My Great-Nephew and Not Being Fired

Posted on 25 Jun 2016 by Frank Moraes

For the first time in what I think is years, Frankly Curious went a whole day without anything being posted. There was no big reason for this. I didn’t go to the hospital. I didn’t get fired. But I’ll explain how it happened.

On Wednesday, I logged 10.5 hours at my day job. That’s a huge amount of work. Most people think that 10.5 hours is a long time to work in a day. But I don’t think they really understand. At a normal job, it’s different. There are breaks and there is lots of time that isn’t productive. But I keep close track of my billing hours — down to the minute, although I bill in five minute increments. So I ended up working until almost 3:00 in the morning. And it was good. I got a lot done.

Cuteness of Babies

On Thursday, I was going down to my niece’s place to meet my great-nephew, Hector. So I got up a bit before 7:00 so that I could work two more hours before leaving. I didn’t manage that; I got 95 minutes logged. It was a fine day, however. My sister had told me that she could spend the whole day watching Hector sleep. I privately scoffed at that. Yet when I got there, I found that I felt the same.

I know it’s all evolutionary. If we weren’t coded to find babies adorable, we would certainly kill them all. But it still seems weird to me. One of the main things that preoccupies me is the scientific fact that we humans don’t have the control that we think we do. And while it may not be a scientific fact, free will is also a delusion. But to have these facts staring at me in my life always bothers me — probably because, for me, there’s a very clear distinction between my intellectual life and my regular life.

The Long, Long Drive

Regardless, I didn’t get back home until after 6:00 (over three hours on the road because the Bay Area may not be Los Angeles, but it’s still a major California urban area). And I was exhausted. I did manage to log a couple of hours of work and then I collapsed. I would have thought that would have been the end of it, but it wasn’t.

The next morning — Friday — I woke up at 7:00 and did what I do every morning: I check my email to see if there were any calamity that I had to deal with. There was not. That’s been interesting. This last week, my workers don’t seem to have been doing that much work. Or maybe it’s just me. I’ve been so focused on a new part of my job that managing the old part of my job seems easy.

Not Getting Fired

Actually, I’m really unhappy with this new part of my job. I just see it very differently than my boss does and I wish that he would find someone else to do it. And I’ve been doing everything I can to get him to relieve me of this work without firing me altogether. But I’m not very good at balancing these kinds of things. So when Toni (who is certainly above me and who I rely on greatly, but who no longer seems like my boss) said she wanted to talk, I said that was fine as long as I wasn’t going to get fired — I wasn’t up for that at the moment. She replied, “Fire you? Pft. You wish.”

Well, she has that kind of right. I think I would like to be fired. But just for a month or two. That would be awesome! But it would require being fired from Frankly Curious too.

Anyway, I did almost nothing productive yesterday. I was still very tired. But more than that, I was mentally tired. I couldn’t face doing any work. I spent most of the day laying on the couch watching movies. I did think of a lot of things to do, but I just couldn’t manage to get up and actually do anything. But I’m back at it now. I guess.

I do plan to finally write an article that has been sitting around for two weeks. No, it’s not politics. More grammar. Although in this case, it’s more “elementary writing.”

Meaning in a Meaningless World

Posted on 18 Jun 2016 by Frank Moraes

Yesterday, on the NPR show Marketplace, Kai Ryssdal signed off, “Friday! Quitting time!” And I thought, “Maybe for you!” I was actually shocked to learn Friday morning that it wasn’t Thursday. But it didn’t matter. Every day is exactly the same. Well, not exactly the same. My writers tend to take the weekends off, so I am able to get caught up with editing. This is a bigger and bigger deal as I do more and more straight management. Which I hate. Just in case you were wondering.

Today, as this is published, will be exactly one year that almost all of my income has come from one company: Quality Nonsense. But I don’t really work for it because it isn’t really a thing. It’s an umbrella company that owns other companies, one of which apparently makes a lot of money, because I keep getting paid and all the writers keep getting paid and the owner is in a different country every day or two. I call him the International Man of Mystery. And there’s much to that. He is an odd bird. He’s a business guy, obviously, because he’s created a number of really successful businesses. But he’s also a total nerd.

This isn’t to say that we agree about everything. There is a reason why I work for him and not the other way around. And we had a bit of a disagreement about the way something ought to be done early this week, and it threw me into a deep depression. As for the specifics, they don’t matter — even to me. But it brings up the issue of meaning. And I’ve spent a great deal of this last week wondering what the point of all this is. I’m well paid for what I do, but we (Okay: I!) always come back to Schopenhauer and the ultimate paradox of life. Here, I’ll put it in a box so you can really think about it:

You work today so you can make money so you can survive until tomorrow. The next day, you work so you can make money so you can survive until the next day. The next day, you work so you can make money so you can survive until the next day. The next day, you work so you can make money so you can survive until the next day. The next day, you work so you can make money so you can survive until the next day…

The only possible answer has to be that you enjoy what you do today. And that requires that your life have meaning. But does mine? Does yours? Oh, don’t think me naive! I know people fool themselves into thinking their lives have meaning. But I think it’s meaning on other people’s terms. It’s about making money. Or it’s about being good so God will let you into the greatest after-party possible. Or it’s about fame. And they are all, well, someone else’s idea of the good life. I guess they work fine if you aren’t self-aware enough to realize that they aren’t your dreams and your meaning.

(None of this should be taken as a slight against my employer, who I’m sure has enough money to never work again. I get more the impression that starting successful businesses is to him much like solving Sudoku puzzles are to me. But I don’t know. Nor do I care. I’m talking about myself.)

What I want — what I have wanted for about a decade — is a theatrical company where I could produce a new kind of play that I’ve invented. I’ve written about 20 plays of this form that combine everything that I care about. And that’s the catch. If you need to depend upon an audience of people like me, you will go out of business before the first act is over.

So I continue on, because I have to make a living. And what I do is, well, not inspiring. It is not a story/documentary about a group of teens who burn themselves to death on video just to be “cool.” But it ain’t brick laying either! It requires every bit as much work and creativity as “The Post-Postmodern Comedy Hour,” which regular readers will know is the best thing I’ve ever done. I’m paid (Well!) to be creative doing regular stuff. Because regular is what sells because most people are “regular.”

I don’t mean to associate myself with them in the least because I am nothing compared to either of them, but is it any surprise that David Foster Wallace and John Kennedy Toole both killed themselves?

This week has helped me see something more clearly, though. I can’t write novels. Well, I can write novels; I have written a novel. But there is no way that the stories I want to tell can be done as novels. Readers won’t put up with it. The one novel I have written really isn’t me; it’s a standard mystery; it is not the sort of thing that I would want to read; it’s just the sort of thing that I have figured out how to write from other writers.

Another thing I learned this week is that I’ve got to find a way to balance my paying work with the work that gives my life meaning. Otherwise, I will eventually decide that assuring tomorrow comes won’t really matter.

Day Job and Life Coming Back to Normal

Posted on 01 Jun 2016 by Frank Moraes

I went down to see my sister last week. I had planned just to stay there for a day, but it didn’t work out like that. I find it very difficult to change my living arrangements. It wasn’t that I was doing anything different there than I would have been doing here. But I went down there Thursday night and didn’t manage to come back until Tuesday morning. But I’m never as productive when I’m away. That’s especially true here at Frankly Curious. With my day job, the work is more concrete.

But I did get a little reminder that I have to be careful what I say here about my day job. It’s not too hard for people to figure out who I’m complaining about when I’m complaining. It makes me want to start a new blog where no one knows who I am. Because even though I understand the need for professionalism, I also don’t much like being constrained here. Not that I think any of my writers read what I have to say here. That’s the thing about the modern world: everyone is doing their own things. It’s not like I read the blogs that my writers have — not much anyway.

For the first time, I have a bit of sympathy for anonymous bloggers, though. Although I have to admit that I don’t know what they are worried about. I don’t just write about my day job here. This is a very personal blog. One of the first articles I wrote was, Getting to the Bottom of Things. Now if you are thinking that this is about the best way to keep your anus clean, you are right. Of course, in keeping with my nature, roughly half of it is about François Rabelais’ first Gargantua and Pantagruel novel, where Gargantua discusses the 57 different objects he used to wipe him bottom.

But as usual, money doesn’t just change everything; it ruins everything. I like my job. And one of the reasons I have the job is that I do have some political sense. It’s hard to find people who can both write and who know about computer technology. So I can’t go around chasing writers away. I’ve been really clear that our people are really good. But that doesn’t mean that they are perfect. What I really need is to find a website where editors go to bitch about their jobs.

That’s an interesting thing about editing as a day job. It all seems pretty obvious to the editor. For example, I sent out an email to all my writers alerting them to our new style for capitalizing titles. I say “new” but the truth is that we haven’t had one. And as a result, I never bugged my writers about their often colorful attempts at capitalization. But then I found this great tool, Title Cap. You enter your title and it changes it to the Chicago style. It’s really great!

So I emailed the link to my writers and updated our inhouse style guide. And I waited. Only one of my writers was excited by it. That surprised me, because this is so great! (Although I wasn’t at all surprised at which writer was excited — we are kindred spirits in these matters.) But they don’t need to get excited. They are freelancers; they can do whatever they want. (As long as they eventually figure out how to capitalize titles properly.) But it is disappointing.

It is indicative of my blessed life that I can get away with writing this article and still keep my day job, however. Also: I can go away on a quasi-vacation and still manage to work at about 60% of my normal. In fact, I was thinking that I could take my father on vacation to the Azores and still not miss much work. I have an odd life though. Frankly Curious would suffer. I think this is the first day out of the last week that I’ve published the standard two articles in a day.

Now that I’m back home and rested, I expect to get back to my normal schedule. But we’ll see. It’s supposed to be 90° for the next week, so I may just be passed out on the couch.