I'll decide when I'm done

Netflix on Xbox is broken is couple of ways, not least of which is that I have to navigate the Xbox interface to get to it.

But the one that makes me genuinely angry is when I'm watching a movie or show, and the moment and credits come on, Netflix shrinks the viewing window and pushes me to the next thing to watch. If it's a serial, there's even a timer until it starts the next one.

I'm pretty sure someone with a marketing degree decided this was a good idea, and I'm even more certain that some, perhaps many, users find this delightful. But they are wrong; it is loathsome.

I like to watch credits. And often some programme will have an Easter egg in or after the credits. I want to see those as well. What I do not want is for someone else to decide when I'm done watching.

Here is the simple fix, Mr. UI Professional: I'll let you know when I'm done because I'll press one of the 4000 buttons on my Xbox controller. Since you never bothered to give me any warning as to what will result from pressing a given button, you can change it with no further warning, I think we can assume any button can alert Netflix that I'm ready to move on. Otherwise, if I don't tell you to do anything, then it means I DON'T WANT YOU TO DO ANYTHING.

I thought this sort of nusiance-disguised-as-convenience was an isolated incident until I was finished a book on my Kindle today, and was looking forward to absorbing the appendices to reinforce what I had just learned from the main text. As soon as Appendix A appeared on my screen, a black page popped up saying, "You just finished the book! Want to rate it? Tell your friends!"

At that moment, what I wanted was button that would cause a giant extendo-arm boxing glove to punch Jeff Bezos in the face. I went from engaged and learning to "gee, how many stars should I give this book?" at Amazon's whim. As if rating and recommending had any fucking relevance in the whole fucking world to what I was reading.

I don't understand why I wage such a lonely battle for user-centric design. How does removing agency help me?

Trick question! IT DOESN'T.

Intrusive UI that purports to assist or direct my experience without consulting me or offering tools to disable it is the kind of massive bullshit that will keep me buying actual books and/or DVDs into the far future.

The fact that two of the largest, best known content middlemen are doing this inspires dim hope in me for something better.

Houston, We Have Pope

So hey, new pope everybody. Olly olly oxen free.

Some nice firsts. First Jesuit pope. First pope from Latin America. First pope to take the name "Francis".

Francis, huh? Man, remember when popes would really go all out on picking good names?

Linus. Arguably the second pope after Peter. Mentioned in the New Testament, OMG. No mention of security blanket issues.

Sixtus III. The second guy to name himself "sixtus" was already pushing it. Could he have just gone to "Seventus"? But taking it to the third power, that's ballsy.

Boniface III. More like Butterface, amirite?



Top Honors
Pope Hilarius

Here's the Wikipedia vandalization perpetrated by my old pal Dmac back in 2005:

Pope Hilarius was, of course, the funniest of all popes. From his name, Americans get the English word hilarious and its sister, hilarity. His humor was a beacon of light in the church during an otherwise dark time, converting many barbarians and heretics with his stand-up comedy. His "men do this; women do that" joke has been passed down from comedian to comedian all the way to the present day. (He was thanked in the credits of Last Comic Standing.) He is also the source of the famous joke that ends in "... when I woke up, my pillow was gone!"

Lent reflections 2013

Lent again, and I'm running at it with the usual half-hearted enthusiasm. I keep wanting religion to mean things. Sometimes it does! But other times it unrolls like a rug and then lies very still like a rug.

This year I wanted to give something up, but I didn't want to give up something that would be, like, hard.

Last year for Lent, M and I tried over the top -- all juice. It was too crazy too much too fast, skipping straight from Burger King to beet juice. We would up retreating to "no processed foods" by Easter.

This year I just didn't want so much work in my suffering. So I found a thing I do a lot, that I like a lot, but that I can stop without pangs.

I'm not eating out. This Lent, everything has to come from the grocery store and be prepared by someone I didn't pay to cook for me.

It's just the right amount of sacrifice. I hope. It requires me to think about food, reflect on my choices, but doesn't seriously deprive me. (Now that I've written that down, it sounds like the biggest softball I could find. Sacrifice without deprivation? Balls to the motherfuckin' walls, Quick!)

Still, it is having an effect. With a serendipity I'll call grace, I started tracking what I eat on an app (myfitnesspal, available for download on your fancyphone of choice). I don't do it every day, and I don't do a crack job of tracking when I do. But the crux is that it creates pauses to think about what I'm shoving in my Doritos-hole all day long and to have different thoughts besides, "More horsemeat."

I'll probably be a few pounds lighter come Easter 2013, but weight loss is a pleasant side effect. What I really want is a religious observance that doesn't lie like a rug, but flies like a carpet. I want God to show me something amazing that irrevocably cuts through fear and complacency.

It sounds like I'm asking for a lot in exchange for not much. If I was serious about this shit, I'd go get imprisoned or beaten, right? But God's economy is not tit for tat. God is always operating on a different scale than humans. We're commemorating a messiah back from the dead! That's kind of a big deal. I've got to come to the table, but I can't be expected to bet real money there, you know?

Given that state of things, I think I can ask for fireworks even if my chief contribution is a wet match. But I'm afraid I won't get them. Or I'm afraid I'll be too stupid to know how to follow up even if I do. Those are the two main outcomes of religion in my life thus far: disappointed or dumbfounded.

I keep showing up though. Trying is better than not trying. 

A Three-year Record

It's only January, and I've already posted more times in 2013 than I did in either 2011 or 2012.

WHAT COULD THIS MEAN?

I always want things to mean something, I want the surface to point to a hidden substratum or -strata.

And you know, usually that pays off. What I think it means is that about the time I stopped blogging regularly I got a job working in the mental health field that took all my psychic energy.

There was no time to try to be mildly humorous on the Internet. I spent every work day not merely trying to provide compassionate assistance to Delaware County residents with moderate mental illness, but also learning how to get all my billable hours in, which as social workers will tell you, is one of the real bitches of their jobs.

Then I moved to a job working for a board game company, AEG. (which yes, is a thing, board games are a business that makes hundreds of millions of dollars annually, I'll have to tell you more about that some time.) And it was great. Except it masticated all my free time until it deposited me on the street recently, because like all entertainment jobs, you must either be lucky or badger-level tenacious to stay steadily employed.

So it could be that I'm coming off a 2.5-year work bender and have space to be reflective again.

But the thing about hidden layers is that they're hidden. Mr. Rumsfeld's infamous "unknown unknowns" always lurk beneath your enterprises. So maybe there are other reasons?

Because I imagine an underworld of black swans that I have failed to uncover, I make promises gingerly for my future. But with a lovely vase of provisos in hand, I'm glad to be back. I hope it means good things for every one of us.

Pursue Your Pipe Dream With Vigor

I don't know what unfinished business draws me to collect these inspirational quotes. A friend of mine once said, "Jeff, you are in no danger of becoming an office drone." But still, I fear it. 

Maybe it's the kind of fear I should just embrace and be transformed. Or maybe it's the kind of fear I should continue to resist because I can only overcome by struggling to the very end?

I'm afraid I don't know. 

It could be that there's no one correct answer and life is not easily reducible into binary choices.

Anyway, here's another quote I read today and wanted to put somewhere safe:
"It is FAR better to pursue your pipe dream with vigor than to halfass something you took as a compromise."

--Kate Beaton

Internet complaint box

I've been reading (okay, skimming) a lot of news articles about the fiscal cliff in the last month, and they are frequently followed by a comments section full of poorly informed vitriol. During the 2012 election it was worse.

One of the favorite metacomments from Facebook (via my wife) was how annoying everyone's friends were with their poorly informed vitriol. Barack Obama and/or Mitt Romney were individually the worst thing to happen to this country since Tippecanoe and Tyler Too drubbed that dandy, "Little Van" out of the White House.

There's a lot of hand-wringing among public service types about civic disengagement. People apparently don't vote. But they do complain on the Internet! Can we use that?

Listen up, all you vitriol-spewers! Instead of typing your mauvais mots to each other on the Internet (where they have no chance of influencing anyone other than your children to shy away from you), send them to your congressperson. 

The same typing! The very same words! Just send them to your elected representative. Vent your unfocused rage toward some FOCUS. There, you might have a chance of doing some good. At very least you'll stop bothering my wife.

Find out the names and email addresses of your congresspersons. If you're not sure what to say, there's a big link in Spanish at the top of the page to remind you about your poorly-informed vitriol concerning illegal immigration! Start there!

Wes Anderson does Star Wars?

Oh, trick titles. You do so much good work.

An interview with perennial QT favorite, Wes Anderson. The money is the toss-off about a Han Solo backstory. I wold pay feature price to see that short in a theater.

DEADLINE: Star Wars was among the films that influenced you early on. What would the world get if Wes Anderson signed on to direct one of these new Star Wars films Disney will make? 

ANDERSON: Well I have a feeling I would probably ultimately get replaced on the film because I don’t know if I have all the right action chops. But at least I know the characters from the old films. 

DEADLINE: You are not doing a good job of selling yourself as a maker of blockbusters. 

ANDERSON: I think you are reading it exactly right. I don’t think I would do a terrible job at a Han Solo backstory. I could do that pretty well. But maybe that would be better as a short.

Also, since we're in the neighborhood, here's Conan O'Brien's take on Wes Anderson's take on Star Wars:

Regret is easy.

I easily fall for those Deathbed Epiphany trains of thought.

• No one wishes they had spent more time at the office.

• You regret the things you didn't do more than the ones you did.

• If only you'd known that consequences for being true to yourself were so minor.

Here's a link to a nurse revealing the top 5 deathbed regrets.

I am deeply interested -- vested -- in doing it right the first time, because there is only a first time. And by "it" I mean life. And by "life" I don't know what I mean.

Today it occurred to me that no matter what you do or don't do in life, you can have regrets. It's not hard.

That's the problem. Regrets are so easy, so common, that they're meaningless. They're the dust bunnies of convalescence.

Life is big, and if you're careful and fortunate, long. At the end, you are likely to have a major regret. Maybe two. I tried guessing what my major regret would be when writing this post, but how the hell do I know? If I die today, I could name you one. But when I'm 80? That's a half-life away from here. I'll be an entirely different human by then. On a cellular level.

Make your peace with the fact that you will grimly fail at something important in life. Do it as early as possible. Then accept the forgiveness you will need. Accept it ahead of time, and go do the thing you want to do.

in re: New Year's Resolutions

My pastor said something a couple years ago that stuck with me:

"Jesus is not particularly interested in your self-improvement schemes."

Iceland on the rebound. Lessons? Anyone?

Remember a few years back when I said that forgiving student loan debt was the thing to do with the billions of relief dollars -- instead of giving them to banks?

Iceland did a version of that. They forgave housing debt when their entire economy went to shit. How's that working out?

Fitch Ratings last week raised Iceland to investment grade, with a stable outlook, and said the island’s “unorthodox crisis policy response has succeeded.” 

People Vs Markets
Iceland’s approach to dealing with the meltdown has put the needs of its population ahead of the markets at every turn. 

Once it became clear back in October 2008 that the island’s banks were beyond saving, the government stepped in, ring-fenced the domestic accounts, and left international creditors in the lurch. The central bank imposed capital controls to halt the ensuing sell-off of the krona and new state-controlled banks were created from the remnants of the lenders that failed.