David S. Atkinson's Blog, page 192

I Don’t Think That Flight Delay Map Is As Useful As The Traffic Congestion Map

I was in an elevator recently that had an electronic display screen. I didn’t think too much about the traffic congestion map that came up. However, when a flight delay map came up, I noticed. I don’t think the latter was as useful as the former.

I’m sure people need to know if their flights might be delayed. But…if you already have a flight booked that day, it might be a little late to act.

After all, if traffic is congested on the route you were planning to take but not another, you can switch. Take a main thoroughfare instead of the interstate. Something. At the very least, leave earlier planning for delay.

Flights though? You probably already have a ticket if it’s relevant. After all, it’s delays on routes from the city to other hubs/destinations in the country. It’s not like you can switch to fly through Minneapolis if the path to Chicago is too crowded. Nor can you really leave earlier at that point, the ticket dictates the time.

Sure, it might still be useful to know that flights on that route might get delayed so you should check your status. At least you’ll know. It just doesn’t seem as useful as traffic congestion, which you can actively do something about.

Just a thought I had.

It Still Seems Weird People Are Surprised I Wrote A Child Narrated Book And Don’t Have Kids

When I sat down to write Bones Buried in the Dirt, I never questioned that it needed to be told with a child narrator. However, one of the most common questions I’ve been asked by people who read it is how many kids I have. The people who ask are usually surprised when I say none.

I can understand a little bit. After all, how did I get the voice right (hopefully I did, I certainly think so and quite a few of the people who have commented on the book seemed to think so)? Still…wasn’t I a kid? Even if I don’t have any of my own, aren’t most of us in contact with kids every day?

I just imagined. I remembered things I’d observed that would help with the voice and used them. Most important for me, I read the text back, in my head and aloud, and listened to try to see if anything sounded false.

I think it worked.

Many authors write characters vastly different from themselves, or at least themselves in their current states. Many aren’t around people like their characters on a daily basis. You either pull it off or keep trying, in my view.

I certainly wasn’t going to have children only for the sake of trying to make the book work.

Don’t Cry That You Tried To Call Your Husband On A Banana Because Dogs Repossessed Your Car.

A friend posted a really weird photo combo this morning with the tagline that now he wanted to know what the heck it was supposed to be. It had three panels, two of which were a variously distraught woman using a banana as if it were a phone. The other was a couple of dogs in a truck, apparently driving. I was half asleep, but I came up with something. Looking at it later, I was amused enough that I wanted to capture it here:

Nancy got cable instead of DirectTV. She paid so much for her programming that she had to sell her iPhone. The only thing she could afford was a banana, and dogs came to repossess her car. She tried to call her husband to tell him dogs were repossessing her car, but she couldn’t…because it was a banana and not a phone. She cried. Don’t cry that you tried to call your husband on a banana because dogs repossessed your car. Get DirectTV.

What My July 4ths Have Been Like

I’ve always been fond of the 4th of July. However, for the last several years my wife has been off at grad school sessions at that time. Instead of big family gatherings of food and fireworks, I’ve been reading and/or writing at home with the cats while all hell breaks loose outside.

Sitting in the house like that at night with all that going on out there, it kind of feels like this:

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter!

Is It Permissable To Talk In Hypotheticals About Your Own Book?

Is it permissable to talk in hypotheticals about your own book? Is that bad form or not? Personally, I’ve always thought authorital intent only held so much value. It’s illuminative, but the text is controlling. Still, why not a hypothetical to consider?

Let’s consider a hypothetical about The Garden of Good and Evil Pancakes. Now, I’d never actually say this about the book, for a variety of reasons, but what if it was an experiment in experiential fiction?

After all, no one telling a story is ever impartially conveying the truth. It’s colored, whether intentionally or unintentionally (or both), by the teller. Any story, true or not, contains some amount of fiction. Merely by setting ourselves up to tell a story, we are already distancing the story somewhat from the truth by some degree of fiction.

This is just as true of the fictions we tell ourselves as those we tell others, perhaps more so.

Perhaps these layer upon each other, as well as compounding and conflating.

Regardless, what if the book were not about what was really happening to a character, or even their perception about what was happening, but about how they felt in what was happening? Perhaps the literal truth becomes a bit more symbolic of emotional reaction, confused all the way into the presented reality.

Perhaps.

Maybe there would even be multiple layers, different degrees of abstraction depending on the topics under consideration. More painful topics, ones the teller was less able to face, might be more abstracted than less painful topics…even to the point of rambling parables. Maybe the teller wouldn’t be aware of it, or would only be partially aware.

This is all mere rambling, though. I’m not saying that this is what The Garden of Good and Evil Pancakes is about. I wouldn’t say that. I’d never say that.

But what if?

Ayn Rand Makes Me Think Of Green Jellÿ

I actually read Anthem by Ayn Rand recently. I didn’t think much of it for various reasons, but that really isn’t important right now. What is important is that it made me think of Anthem by Green Jellÿ. In fact, let’s look at that now:

Why Do Americans Always Get Poutine Wrong?

After a previous trip to Quebec, I developed a taste for poutine. Since then, I keep running across people claiming to sell it in the US. Vermont, Minnesota, Colorado, I see it from time to time and keep ordering it because I’ve got a weird taste for it. However, everywhere I get it in the US they keep getting it wrong.

They melt the cheese.

As I see it, the cheese in poutine should be cheese curds. It may be served hot enough that some of the cheese curds start to melt, but poutine is not just gravy fries with melted cheese. This is the way I’ve seen it served everywhere I’ve ordered it in Quebec…but everywhere I’ve seen people try to serve it in the US the cheese is entirely melted. I don’t think the cheese was cheese curds at all. Minneapolis was served so hot that even the gravy was darn near boiled off.

This is wrong.

If they want to serve the cheese melted, why even claim it’s poutine at all? Why not just call it gravy cheese fries? Calling it poutine raises expectations, expectations America appears unable to fulfill.

Heck, even McDonald’s in Montreal can get this right. America: get your act together.

Dear Super 8 In Sawyer Michigan

Dear Super 8 in Sawyer, Michigan:

I can appreciate not wanting to spend the money to cool rooms that aren’t in use, or to spend keeping a mini fridge cool in a room when it is not being used. However, keeping that air and the mini fridge entirely off tends to make both stink. This is not the best first impression when one’s hotel guest walks into a room.

Just saying.

We’ll ignore the fact that the hotel room is apparently old and musty enough to reek like a men’s locker room when the air is not currently running. Well, we could if the air had actually been running. Since this was the last room available in your hotel, perhaps you might have guessed it was going to be used and kept the air on for at least a relatively warmer temperature, just to keep it running once in a while to keep the smell down.

Similar with the mini fridge. Do you know all fridges reek if they are totally turned off and kept closed? Perhaps you really didn’t want to do that, even to save money on power. You kind of ruined the mini fridge. Why you unplugged it entirely, I’ll never know. We’ll ignore the fact that it will take long enough now to come up from a totally off and uncooled state to full cooled that I will check out tomorrow before being able to use it. Or we would, if this did not also go along with the fact that the fridge smells like rotting dead bodies.

Super 8 in Sawyer, Michigan, this was just not the impression you wanted to make for $150 for a single night on a Queen bed. I’m sure you can get away with charging that here, but I’m not impressed and my disappointment is going to color my mental impression of Super 8’s in general.

Let’s Reorganize The Bathrooms

In light of recent developments, our thoughts are all abuzz regarding what we can do next about more of the issues that still face the United States in how we treat people. Something that immediately popped into my head, which is a tiny thing in the bigger scheme, was again (I’ve talked about this on this blog before) that we should think about making our restrooms more like what I’ve seen some places in Europe.

I’m sure some people will think this is stupid and get upset that this is the first thing that popped into my head, but it did. The public restrooms I’m talking about were not separated by gender. There were individual toilet closets that were truly private instead of merely having separators that didn’t fully go to the ceiling or floor (yielding a semi-communal bathroom experience). Everybody used the same toilet closets, no separate ones for men and women. Then, there was a shared sink area. The reason this seems like a good idea? There is then utterly no possible reason to even care about anyone’s gender when using the bathroom.

Seriously, since the toilet closets are all individual, no one is going to the bathroom together. Even for people who only want to go to the bathroom with people of their gender, they aren’t going to the bathroom with anyone. It’s private. Thus, the gender of anyone else using the bathroom is completely not their business and they don’t need to know. When someone needs the bathroom, they use the first one available, not different lines for men and women based on traffic patterns.

I see no reason not to. It’s still the same number of toilets, and just requires that the individual stalls be made more private.

Then, no separate restrooms for men and for women. Just individual toilet closets for people. It’s just such an easy way to stop thinking that the gender identity of someone else is anyone’s business except theirs and any relationship partner(s) they have.

Why not just make this aspect a total non-issue?

I know it’s trivial. But there’s so many things we’re hassling people about today that would really be trivial if we didn’t want to make them a big deal. We just have to change the way we think about things. At least, that’s the way it seems to me this morning.