Google's great. Knowing how to use it cleverly is even better.

Ever been sitting down before, and a movie quote comes into your head?  You have no idea who said it, in what movie, or even exactly what they said, but it burns in your head hotter than a sunburn in the Sahara.

This happened to me, but a few moments ago.  I was sitting, minding my own business, when the whiff of this quote would rock my next 15 minutes to the ground.  "So am I ________?  Yeah, I'm (a little? a bit?)  ________"

I think the blanks may have been filled by upset, and I gave up doing this in my own head after 5 minutes, so I turned to my buddy google.  Typed (in quotes) "So am I upset?  Yeah, I'm a bit upset."  Perhaps the "bit" was off too, adding to my searching anxieties.

Nothing.  I concluded that upset wasn't the word I was going for here.  So I tried omitting it: "So am I ? Yeah, I'm a bit".  But that wouldn't work because there's a word missing entirely from the quote!  I take away the quotes, and the most distinctive keyword I've entered is "bit", which I wasn't even sure was right in the first place.  Effectively, this problem made a needle in the haystack look like a god damn lap in a bathtub compared to how hard it would be to search through the some 396 million hits which might not even contain what I was looking for.

Here I am, just an innocent man trying to mind his own business, but this movie quote won't leave me alone and I don't have the means to track it down!  I couldn't let this one go.  I remembered some basic command line searching strategies.

When tracking down a file, and you don't know how it ends, one uses the asterisk.  So, if you've forgotten "Malkovich" from the title "Being John Malkovich", and you're looking to find it on your computer, you don't have to worry.  Just search for "Being John *"

Furthermore, there's a bookending feature too.  Let's say you forget some words from the movie title "Don't be a Menace in South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood".  Hard to forget, I know, but just for the sake of argument, you forget exactly what you shouldn't be doing, and where you shouldn't be doing it in the title of this film.  Simple!  Just search "Don't be a Menace * in the Hood".  Should come right up.

Now I think you see where I went with this.  I thought it would be brilliant if google offered the same tactical advantages to searching (which was a likely thought, since google tends to like things that make searching easier).  I searched "So am I *? Yeah, I'm a *"

First hit.  I am Sam.  The prosecuting lawyer, on his sensitivity towards the subject matter: "So am I sensitive?  Yeah, I'm a little sensitive".

The I figured it out satisfaction was only multiplied by how much tactics I put into finding the answer.

So am I good at google querying?  Yeah, I'm a little good at google querying.

Don't care how much you want to prove a point

There's a fallacy.  One that's entirely unacceptable.  It's called the Straw-Man and it comes in many forms.

Here's an example:

Person 1 - I support capital punishment.
Person 2 - Person 1 thinks everyone who goes to jail deserves to die.

See what happened there?  Person 2 manipulated Person 1's words into something he never said, in order to make the speaker look foolish.  That's why they call this one the "Straw-Man", because you essentially make up a person (a straw man), and start attacking it to make people think you're attacking someone else.

Question everything you hear, read, watch... everything.  Cause this bad boy comes up all too much.  We want to prove points so badly that we do ourselves the disservice of not even trying to understand one another.  People tend to just listen for anything they can argue against, then argue against it without offering a charitable reconstruction of their opposers words.

I was reading today, and a writer named Bereano criticized other writers for offering a utopian vision for a different kind of society.  He - actually - goes on to say this:

But utopian means "nowhere."


Let's just forget the fact that utopian doesn't mean "nowhere".  That's absurd.  It means an ideal state in which everything is perfect.  But like I said, let's let that one slide.  We shouldn't, but we will.

The fact of the matter is, he offered no charitable reconstruction of the opponents' viewpoints.  He just changed what the word meant, and continued with his arguments.  Why all this charitable reconstruction business?  Why bother?  Well, if you're debating, the purpose should be to figure out what is right, not to figure out how to sound right.  If you misunderstand your opponent's view, you might as well just stop talking.  Cause you're arguing against a wall.

I know what you're thinking.  "But haven't you just done this?  You took an isolated part of his text, offered no context, and went on with your argument."  The difference is that I read it.  It has some interesting points, and that's what makes it so disappointing.  It's peppered with snarky, childish, blindly pessimistic aims towards debate.  It misleads anyone uncritical enough to overlook these fallacies, and it disinterests anyone critical enough to notice them.  Arguing - against - a - wall.

If you could just do me one favour today, please.  Try to understand what people are saying.  Make sure they understand what they are saying.  Only then will you find something to argue for.  Don't change words around to sound right.  It eats my soul.

Stop it.

Inner Adventure

Venturing deep into the bellowing insanities of my cerebral cortex, I find that my imagination has made good friends with universal infinitum.  Flattered by a prompt introduction, and an offering of privacy with such a welcome acquaintance, I lean in and ask my new friend questions about my own fleeting time.  Initially it apologizes for its need to destroy the walls round me, and proceeds to tell me:

"Time will never run from you, yet always, it will.  You will never be remembered, nor forgotten.  You are, and not.  You will always be, and never again."

I respected the honesty, however my appreciation was outweighed by my concern.  Beyond the destruction, I could no longer find my way out.

The Holiday Spirit

It was raining outside. I wanted to seclude into my head as deeply as possible to avoid thinking about how cold it was, or how fast I couldn't go with my two feet.

I was stopped by a light, where there stood a crossing guard I'd seen the day before. Gave me a lecture about my headphones, how they were dangerous cause I couldn't hear what was going on around me. I took them out before I got to him this time.

We stood there for a few seconds, deciding whether to speak to one another in our heads. Once we came comfortable with the fact that we recognized each other he broke the silence.

"In the Holiday Spirit?", he asked.

I didn't know what side of that fence he was on, so I muttered out the least conflicting answer I could think of. The words didn't even matter, they meant nothing. He was a stranger, and I doubted how much he really wanted to talk about it.

"I couldn't give less about this time of year", he clarified, defensively, "People just trying to get you to spend money on gifts for people."

Great, I've heard this before, and he's probably just projecting his frustration onto me. Until he snapped me out of my disposition to be distant about our conversation.

"I can't even take part in it anymore"

He unloaded it all. He once had nothing against Christmas. The problem is now that so many people make you believe you have to pay to love, and when he can't show love through money he's excluded from a holiday that's centred around gifting.

"It wasn't this way 35 years ago." I no longer felt distant from him. He was just a heartbroken man who wanted his world back. "Everyone cares about money money money. It's all anyone thinks about, and it makes me sick."

This is where I decided to contribute. I told him that not everyone cares about money, there are just a few people who are very good at manipulating it, and they hide away in the caves they call offices, leaving good, innocent people on the front lines of retail and customer service. All you can do is see through it. That's all that will get us out of their clutches.

"Those people do nothing but scheme. It's awful. The sooner their schemes fail, the better off this world will be. Everyone cares about money."

Another example of how capitalism has turned us against each other. It's gotten so out of control that this man sees no good in anyone. All I could bring myself to tell him was to see through the schemes of the few, and realize that the people we interact with are good. People are good. People are good.

But I couldn't help but feel like the silent majority I was preaching for had let this man down.

"It wasn't like this 35 years ago", he said.

The man just wanted his world back.