{"id":14043,"date":"2013-06-18T06:16:02","date_gmt":"2013-06-18T10:16:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=14043"},"modified":"2023-10-27T10:42:30","modified_gmt":"2023-10-27T14:42:30","slug":"potpourri-june-18th-2013-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2013\/06\/potpourri-june-18th-2013-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"Potpourri, June 18 (2013 ed.)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>[Continuing in what seems to have become an annual <em>June 18\u00a0<\/em>tradition, of commenting about whatever the heck I want to&#8230;]<\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"intrinsic-container intrinsic-container-16x9\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/pPCzqJ2RtIs?rel=0\" width=\"601\" height=\"338\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p class=\"smalltext\"><em>[Video: Neil Gaiman signs 1200 copies of his newest novel, <\/em>The Ocean at the End of the Lane<em>.]<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&#8212;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Medium-lukewarm:<\/strong> I&#8217;m still <a title=\"My posts at Medium.com\" href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/@johnesimpson\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">posting occasionally over at Medium<\/a>. (Most recently, a brief appreciation of Carl Sagan.) But I still don&#8217;t get it, quite. The first time I posted there &#8212; the &#8220;Scribbling in Books&#8221; piece &#8212; was right after receiving the invitation to contribute to Medium. <a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/images\/mediumcom_statspage.png?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" style=\"width: 40%;\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/images\/mediumcom_statspage_sm.png?ssl=1\" alt=\"My medium.com 'stats' page, as of the morning of June 18, 2013\" \/><\/a>Within an hour or two of its posting, I got an email reporting that the thing had made a list of <a title=\"medium.com: current 'Editor's Picks'\" href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/editors-picks\/latest\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Editor&#8217;s Picks<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Exciting news, right? It certainly boosted the page&#8217;s view count (see image at right; click to enlarge.) And yet (as you can also glean from the image) there was little if any spillover to subsequent posts. I have no way to figure out\u00a0<em>why<\/em> the drop-off, alas. All the possible reasons I can think of are sobering, if not depressing. If a post makes either the Editor&#8217;s Picks list, or a similar list of those most recommended by other Medium readers, you apparently can count on some good exposure. Otherwise&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Because of the way Medium is organized &#8212; very little information about those posting there &#8212; aside from their thumbnail photos (and, of course, the topics they choose to address) there is no way to know with any certainty the context in which they write. How old\/young are they? What other sites, even what other Medium writers, do they read most often? (No blogrolls.) On what posts have they commented?<\/p>\n<p>I can sorta tell that most of them are young, probably under 40 years of age. They tend to have professions rather than jobs. They&#8217;re politically astute. It&#8217;s almost charming how willingly they offer life advice: I&#8217;ve read numerous posts which begin, not in so many words, something like:\u00a0<em>Now that I&#8217;m 30 years old, I can say with assurance that X is true<\/em> (whatever the X of the moment). I wonder if I ever had such confidence. (Probably not.)<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><strong>Monkeys:<\/strong> Today&#8217;s\u00a0<em>Writer&#8217;s Almanac<\/em> e-newsletter features this poem:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>To Help the Monkey Cross the River,<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>which he must<br \/>\ncross, by swimming, for fruits and nuts,<br \/>\nto help him<br \/>\nI sit with my rifle on a platform<br \/>\nhigh in a tree, same side of the river<br \/>\nas the hungry monkey. How does this assist<br \/>\nhim? When he swims for it<br \/>\nI look first upriver: predators move faster with<br \/>\nthe current than against it.<br \/>\nIf a crocodile is aimed from upriver to eat the monkey<br \/>\nand an anaconda from downriver burns<br \/>\nwith the same ambition, I do<br \/>\nthe math, algebra, angles, rate-of-monkey,<br \/>\ncroc- and snake-speed, and if, <em>if<\/em><br \/>\nit looks as though the anaconda or the croc<br \/>\nwill reach the monkey<br \/>\nbefore he attains the river&#8217;s far bank,<br \/>\nI raise my rifle and fire<br \/>\none, two, three, even four times into the river<br \/>\njust behind the monkey<br \/>\nto hurry him up a little.<br \/>\nShoot the snake, the crocodile?<br \/>\nThey&#8217;re just doing their jobs,<br \/>\nbut the monkey, the monkey<br \/>\nhas little hands like a child&#8217;s,<br \/>\nand the smart ones, in a cage, can be taught to smile.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Thomas Lux [<a title=\"Google Books: 'The Cradle Place,' by Thomas Lux\" href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=dJ0_S34YTegC&amp;pg=PA19#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Oh, to know which target to aim at&#8230;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&#8212;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Department of Conspicuous Consumption:<\/strong>\u00a0So, The Missus has offered to get me a tablet device. All other considerations aside, for me this really boils down to a question of&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Well, it&#8217;s like Facebook. You know how everybody started getting on Facebook, and they&#8217;d say things like\u00a0<em>And you can do X, Y, and Z, and then you can do X and Z together, and&#8230;<\/em> etc.? The big question back then was:\u00a0<em>Well, okay, but\u00a0<\/em>why<em> would I <\/em>want<em> to do X, Y, and Z at all???<\/em><\/p>\n<p>This is the same question I ask myself on the getting-a-tablet front.\u00a0Of course, just as with Facebook, I can easily see myself no longer asking that question after a few months&#8217; use.<\/p>\n<p>Answer hazy. Try again later.<\/p>\n<p><a name=\"americanwoman\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&#8212;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sparkle someone else&#8217;s eyes:<\/strong> I&#8217;ve had a weird fascination for the 1970 song &#8220;American Woman&#8221; ever since I first heard it. It&#8217;s got a very distinctive\u00a0<em>sound<\/em> &#8212; what the heck is that buzzing effect, anyhow? is that just a weirdly fuzzed-up electric guitar? &#8212; and its lyrics, as I thought then, were nicely incisive. But then I found out that the Guess Who &#8212; the band who recorded it &#8212; were Canadian&#8230; which really added some punch: this wasn&#8217;t just an American band, this was\u00a0<em>how outsiders see us<\/em>. A lightbulb-over-the-head moment.<\/p>\n<p>One further association with the song probably didn&#8217;t hurt its appeal for me:<\/p>\n<p>The high school I attended had an annual spring tradition, called Sports Night, which pitted two teams of girls against each other in a variety of contests of one kind or another. These teams were named after the school colors, which were maroon and white, and (as I recall) girls remained with one team or the other for the entire four years of high school. For one such contest &#8212; at least that year &#8212; each team had to perform a group dance to a contemporary song. I favored the Maroon team, because all the girls I had multiple overlapping secret crushes on (<a title=\"Earlier RAMH post: 'Perfect Moments: The Girl Group on the Bus'\" href=\"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2012\/12\/perfect-moments-the-girl-group-on-the-bus\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">crushes I&#8217;d nurtured for years<\/a>) were Maroons. And guess which song they danced to?\u00a0<em>Yeah<\/em>. I believe it was, in those pre-music video days, the first time I&#8217;d ever seen young women do anything so, well, <em>sexy<\/em>\u00a0as members of a coordinated ensemble &#8212; certainly do it and get away with it. A lot of fanning of the self took place among the teenaged boys in the bleachers that night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Continuing in what seems to have become an annual June 18\u00a0tradition, of commenting about whatever the heck I want to&#8230;] [Video: Neil Gaiman signs 1200 copies of his newest novel, The Ocean at the End of the Lane.] &#8212; Medium-lukewarm: I&#8217;m still posting occasionally over at Medium. (Most recently, a brief appreciation of Carl Sagan.) 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