Genuine Cookie Fortunes: Number One of an Infinite Series

Chinese Fortune cookies often contain astonishing pronouncements.

From time to time they will be quoted here exactly as found within the original cookie.

Number One:

Only listen to fortune cookie,
disregard all other fortune telling
units.

LEARN CHINESE - Eggplant
qie(2) zi(2)
Lucky Numbers 46,26,50,45,56,49

Adverbs and Adjectives

Actually overheard in a University Classroom:

Professor: If an adverb modifies the verb, what does an adjective modify?

Student: The "jective."

To Octopus. A new verb

There are hugs and there are Hugs.

There are the namby pamby air-hugs that ladies give each other insincerely to avoid intimacy and smudging their make up.

Then there are friendlier hugs of greeting, football player crushing hugs of congratulations after they win the game, and other shades of grey in between.

But there are those totally entwined hugs (both erotic and not) in which the participants so thoroughly intertwine their limbs (arms and legs, necks and torsos) that the place where the hugger and huggee begin and leave off are difficult to determine.

I think this deserves a better description than "hugging."

So, I've "verbized" yet another noun from "octopus" into "to octopus" meaning for two (or perhaps more) people to so totally entwine their limbs that the place where the hugger and the huggee begin and leave off are difficult to determine.

Examples: They octopussed and then fell asleep.

The two kittens were octopussed as they took a nap.

The teenagers were so octopussed, it was hard to tell how they could stand up. In fact, they toppled over onto the bed, still octopussed.

You're free to use the new verb provided you credit me. You can send money, too. I won't refuse.

And have fun octopussing.

WALL-E. Some film-making reflections.

By now you've either seen WALL-E or read something about the film (or WALL-E himself). Much has been made of the story-telling style of this unexpectedly remarkable film, so it might be worth swinging the flashlight around and attempting to illuminate another part of the picture.

It's facile to say that WALL-E is an homage to, say, Charlie Chaplin since no characters say much of anything until 40 minutes or so into the 98 minute movie. It's a bit more than a Chaplin homage, I'd venture: Motion Pictures as a form had no synchronous dialogue to speak of from the inception of movies in 1894 until 1928 or so. Deprived of "spoken" dialogue, thousands and thousands of films found a way to tell stories through body language, motion, facial expressions, editing, intertitles and the Stanton and Reardon screenplay is absolutely in the classic tradition of the so-called silent era. You have to watch the movie to tell what's happening. This is not illustrated radio (in the way that most modern television shows are which enable you to know what's happening even if you're in the other room cooking dinner and can't see the TV set). This is true "visual" story-telling.

What's stunning about this simple and quietly touching little fable (if one can stretch the definition of "fable" to include robots along with anthropomorphic animals) is the economy and richness of the script. There's hardly any wasted motion here, no fat in the meat, as it were. A second viewing reveals how wonderfully a detail pays off at the end. For example, each and every one of the "mad" robots released by the blast from EVE's disconnected arm plays a specific (and comic) part in the final chase scene. Rich in forwshadowing, the storyline shades in character, emotion, motivation all through tiny details: WALL-E's collection of his favorite garbage, the spare parts library, a tilt of his eyepods or twist of a mechanical wrist, and ultimately the precious videotape of Hello Dolly.

WALL-E himself is something of a simpleton, as one might expect from a robot intended to compress garbage, yet it's that incremental step up from "mechanical device" to "lonely being" that slides unnoticed past our critical inclinations that makes this whole thing work. The "acting" of what is literally a box-shaped garbage scoop on tank treads is amazing. Reduced to minimal cues to emotion, the animators have been forced to express character through the simplest forms of mime. Marcel Marceau would have been proud of them.

Nothing more than "boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back again" in schematic construction, the plot is woven intricately with the sort of science fiction detail that has -- until now -- been nearly impossible to create on the motion picture screen. I found myself thinking that the late Robert Sheckley, a seminal writer of speculative fiction in the 1940s and 50s would have loved this film. His stories were, twice, made into films (Freejack and The 10th Victim), but without the richness of modern CG graphics. One evening, about a year ago, I found myself watching an aerial shot of dozens of sailing ships gliding an 18th Century Harbor in Pirates of the Caribbean and realizing in that moment that virtually anything we can think of can now be shown on the huge motion picture screen in dazzling detail (soon to be followed by the same thing in stunning stereoscopic 3D). Now, here's WALL-E, the quintessential 1940's science fiction story fully realized in awesome reality 30 or 40 feet high in full color. [It breaks my heart that Ray Bradbury and I will never have the chance to bring The Martian Chronicles to the screen (as it should have been long ago) using this technology to re-create the retro-science fiction vision of the book. But that's a topic for another time.]

Few modern films have the simple, direct originality of WALL-E's screenplay. It has become de-rigeur to overload films with sizzle and flash and to leave the meat in the refrigerator. Young directors and editors, intoxicated with AVID and other non-linear editing systems, overdose with two-frame jump cuts simply because it's so easy to do so, and ignore the needs of telling a good story clearly. Not so here. This film plays out with effortless clarity. This has inexpicably become a nearly lost art. Somehow Hollywood has allowed its current product to become synonymous with "expensive computer graphics." Even the wonderful Star Wars series has gotten a bit too cozy with the aesthetics of computer games instead of the stories of DeMaupassant and perhaps this has led American filmmaking closer and closer to the slippery slope of entertainment based solely upon spectacle.

This, like the movie, is an essay theme worth re-visiting. Fine pieces of jewelry invite the owner to pick them up, turn them in the light, and discover new beauty over and over again.

In the end, WALL-E transcends its own technique and its very origins in digital bits and fractal equations. It's a softly whispered tale of loneliness, dreams, and loss. But most of all, it is a story of hope. Hope for the future, hope for mankind, hope for friendship and companionship, hope for the warm loving touch of a hard, cold mechanical hand.

And in the stunning climactic moment when the technological equivalent of fingers intertwine with passion and life, no words can express the fullness of the relationship between a square, clanking robot and a shining, white, flying egg with arms, and the promise that we, too, will survive our own pollution, technology and human follies with hearts -- filled like theirs -- with love.

If It's Not in Google, Does It Really Exist?

Woe be unto those who were born before Google took over the world.

Alas! I learned to read books and newspapers and magazines. And -- gasp! -- I talk to people!

Not so, apparently, those who grew up with the Internet fully in place.

For the past two years, I have been trying to have the IMDB list a film I made in 1969. It's a real film, trust me. It's called Solstice, and it was shown at film festivals. Some of the people who made it became "famous." I even have a 16mm print of it, and, if you still don't trust me, I'll arrange to meet at a mutually convenient dark street corner and let you hold it in your hand, and I might even project it so that you can see that the images printed on the celluloid add up to a real living breathing "movie."

The faceless gatekeepers at IMDB (the Internet Movie Database to the rest of you) don't believe me.

"We can't find it in Google," they tell me.

"Well, that's because Google didn't exist in 1969," I tell them.

"Yes, but we can find most anything important in Google," they retort. "How about the distributor?"

The distributor was the New York University Film Library. But. They don't exist anymore. And they don't have a website. Maybe they never had a website.

I tell the faceless drone at IMDB this.

"But we can find anything important on Google," they repeat. "If it's not in Google, we can't add it to the database."

So what's the problem? Do they think I'm lying? Do they think the reel of film I'm holding in my hand is some sort of hallucination? Do they want a bribe? Probably not the latter, because they are too cowardly to tell me who they really are let alone supply an address to mail them a bribe. I'll have an easier time meeting you on a dark street corner to show you the actual film than to find out who or where these folks are.

This problem exists in spades on Wikipedia.

One of the main criteria for deleting facts on Wikipedia is how many entries about the "fact" the so-called "editor" can find when they Google the fact.

We have started an important new not-for-profit called the "Digital Nitrate Prize." Suffice it to say that this is a major service to film preservation: it will encourage the full preservation of the original beauty of real motion picture film in the inevitable transition to digital preservation and projection.

However, the "editors" at Wikipedia won't allow us to have an entry about the Digital Nitrate Prize. In fact, we're now threatened with being banned if we try to add it to the online encyclopedia!

There is, of course, the issue of who these "editors" are. Well, the answer is that I have no idea! Nor, I believe, does anyone else have any idea who they are. They are, one supposes, over weight nerds with some vaguely positive form of autism who can sit in front of their computors 24/7 and try to reject facts from being posted in Wikipedia.

To their credit, let me surmise that there must be the internet equivalent of the unwashed masses who would like to see their Great Aunt Minnie listed in Wikipedia who need to be deterred. I'll give them that. There are too many Aunt Minnies in the world for us to read about all of them in Wikipedia. The logistics of telling one Aunt Minnie from another Aunt Minnie makes my brain spin.

But benevolent not-for-profit cash prizes that will save the world's film heritage? How does that parse out?

These guys go by names like "NightRider" or "SlashAndBurn" or "UpUrFactz" and other cute names. I'm supposing most of them are guys because girls don't usually call themselves "DemonKnight," they prefer the internet equivalent of "FlowerDemon" or "DestroyerInPink."

I discovered yesterday that they get "points" for editing. If they make 100 edits, they get to display a little cute graphic on their page.

So "DemonKnight" wants to have this little graphic on his page and is vaguely incapable of doing real research. (We can safely assume that "DemonKnight" has never read a newspaper and plays X-Box simulaneously with editing WikiPedia. Perhaps there's a Nintendo version of Wikipedia that allows you to censor articles using a game controller). How does he do this? Well, you get points for deleting articles. Delete one article, one point! Delete 90 articles, 90 points! Delete 500 articles and you get an even bigger, gaudier graphic. Wow!

And what research does "DemonKnight" do? You guessed. He puts Digital Nitrate Prize into Google and counts how many times Google finds it. There must be a magic number, but we don't know what it is.

But apparently, if it's under 10 or so hits, or God Forbid, no hits at all, it doesn't exist. The fact of there being a board of internationally famous film archivists involved and discussion in the field about it doesn't seem to matter. It's not in Google, and it doesn't exist.

"Google ergo sum!" "I Google, therefore I am!" Take that Rene Descartes!




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LINKS
[Links for The Digital Nitrate Prize: http://www.answers.com/topic/digital-nitrate-prize ]

"Tuh" The New Word In Town

Unfortunately, I've done this myself, so rest easy.

The English word "to," a common and much beloved preposition, has been transmogrified into "tuh" when it is spoken outloud in sentences by an increasing number of Americans (and perhaps those in other countries as well, but I'm not sure because my sample is too small).

It's still spelled "to" (as if it were to be pronounced that way, too), but it is mostly pronounced tuh.

"I went to the store" comes out as "I went tuh the store."

This is not just another case of saying "nuclear" as "new-cue-lar" as one of our current politicians is so fond of doing. No, it is a little hard to keep your tongue moving properly when you say "nuclear" especially if you are not too fond of reading and spelling. Those who say "new-cue-lar" tend to spell it nucular, so they have an excuse. (In case you are confused, it is pronounced "new-klee-are" or something very much like that.)

But this new "tuh" thing is some sort of creeping tongue laziness. We can all see how it's spelled, for heaven's sake. It' s a two letter word composed of "t" and "o." It's hard to mess that up.

It's supposed to be pronunced like "two." They are homonyms, right? 'Two=to' when it comes to pronunciation. That should be easy.

"I want tuh go out tuh the movies."

"Did you take the book back tuh the library or did you give it to you dog to play with." Now there's one where they are differentiated. I think.

Perhaps "to" is pronounced correctly when we want to emphasize it. "Did you give it to her or did you just leave it on the table?" I'll bet you'd say "to" as "two" in that sentence, wouldn't you?
Not that I have any way to know, but when you are reading these sentences to yourself in your head, are you saying "to" as in "two" or do you misprounounce it in your mind as well? I tend to think "to" (as in "two") when I read silently to myself and while I'm typing this.

But, as I previously confessed, I (ahem) do sometimes utter the dreaded "tuh." "So I said tuh the guy that he oughta give it back tuh her! And he told me tuh shove it."

And perhaps you will, too.

Fewer And Fewer Fewers

Fewer and fewer of us use "fewer" as a word. It has been replaced by less.

Modern folks would say "less and less of us use "fewer," but that's wrong, not that you'd know it by listening to anyone else but me and a few of my foolish (or is that "few-less"?) friends. It annoys me to hear otherwise intelligent announcers on, say, NPR, saying "fewer" less and less, if at all. Every day, in fact, there is less use of few.

The difference, for those of you who are too young to remember or just don't or didn't care, is that "less" is for "amounts" of things and "fewer" is for numbers of things or people.

Here're the examples.

• There is less water in the short glass than in the tall glass.
• There are six people in the blue car and four in the red one. The red car has fewer people in it.

No one would say "please put fewer sugar into the pie," but no one seems to have a problem saying there are less people in that line than in this one.

That, I guess, is how language changes. It seems to become less precise and much less useful. (Intuitively, one does know that you wouldn't say "fewer precise.")

Is it just laziness on the part of the average person? Or is the difference between "fewer" and "less" just too hard to learn?

I have fewer and fewer ideas about it and less and less time to try to figure it out. Or is that less and less ideas about it and fewer and fewer time to try to figure it out? Nahhh... it's the first one, don't you agree?