A Book review from Tidd

The Little Guide To Unhip

by Kate Rigby

You'll never have so much fun disagreeing with an author. And that's really the point with Kate Rigby's "Little Guide To Unhip" : she has assembled a highly subjective hotch-potch of clothing, pop stars, TV shows, cultural icons, social situations, food, pets, and various other phenomena, and rated them on an 'unhip scale'. They're all personal choices, and as she admits at the end, "you may disagree on some of my inclusions".

I disagreed with her very first choice! Gilbert O'Sullivan, whatever else he fell into, did have one of the great, era-defining songs, "Nothing Rhymed", after which I can forgive him anything. Now if she'd said Leo Sayer ... but wait ... read on, perhaps she does? 

Rigby writes with wit and dash, and more than a little personal reminiscence. You get the distinct impression that she has lived through, even suffered, each of the unhip manifestations she describes. She also writes with a great deal of affection for her subjects; clearly "unhip" does not mean "terminally awful", but simply "something she may (or may not) enjoy but doesn't rush to put on Facebook".

She deviates very briefly from the blueprint : can religious organisations be rated on a hipness scale? I'm not sure they can.  However, you will laugh out loud as you read through this short, undemanding yet comically rewarding book. 

One final thing - why the "unhip" of the title, why not "uncool"? This is part of the joke, as Rigby has used a term that is in itself "unhip" in these oh-so-cool days. 

Thoroughly recommended.

(please note : the link behind the title takes you to the book's listing on Amazon)

A proposal to encourage Artwiculate voting

An idea to encourage Artwiculate voting

First, the success of the game is in the enthusiasm of individual players, lovingly crafting tweets using the WOTD. It is not dependent on results! However, many players are proud and happy when they feature in the rankings, and anything that would encourage more people to vote and make the rankings more accurate, would be welcomed by many players.

The number of people who actually vote on the Artwiculate site has always been comparatively low, but recently seems to have nose-dived. From conversations with Artwiculati, it seems that the main problem is the number of tweets to read through (it's a daily commitment, not a one-off exercise). On an average day there may be 15+ pages, numbering in excess of a 300 tweets.

These tweets - which Artwiculate automatically indexes from Twitter - include a number of 'non entries':

• tweets that were never intended to be part of the game
  
• retweets that went wrong ("RT" missing, or comments added)
  
• tweets that reference other tweets - e.g. "<== this is awesome!"
  
• tweets from Artwiculati, thanking other players for RTs, etc
  
• duplicates, where players haven't used the Artwiculate 'remove' button
  
• spam (on a bad day!)
  

My idea is about 'filtering' the indexed tweets to a level that other players have agreed would be more manageable : 100 tweets, the equivalent of 5 pages. It would look something like this :

1. with (e.g.) 2 hours to go, Artwiculate would issue a list of the 100 leading tweets, in a form that could be voted on
   
2. 'leading' is defined as the 100 tweets which, at that point, have gained the most points by Artwiculate's scoring system, but see next..
3. in order to maximise the number of players who would be able to feature in this list, only a player's best (e.g.) 3 tweets would appear (as more players joined, this could be reduced to 2, and perhaps even to 1 in the future!)
   
4. No player would be able to vote for any tweet in the list which they had already voted on, on the main site (just as no-one could vote previously from a profile AND on site)

None of this would stop people from voting through all the tweets as now, if they wish, but it would be a boon for busy or tired players who at present find voting too much of a regular commitment, and are therefore - as can be seen from the figures - choosing not to vote at all. Looking through 100 tweets would still be a solid task, but it would be manageable. 

My estimation is that much of what is required is already in place, in effect : 

• A list of top tweets for the day (there is already a Top 50 produced daily)
• Limiting number of 'tweets per player' that can rank (already done for the Top 50)
• Limiting voting to once per tweet (already done)
• Announcing the list with 'x hours to go' (already done with "the lead has changed...")

A side-effect of this would its scaleability in the future : as more players joined the game, and the number of pages grew, the task of voting would remain the same. And the BEST result would be on 'spam' days, where even 60+ pages of tweets would still only require 100 to be voted on!

It's LOSE not LOOSE !!

There is an epidemic on the internet. The word "lose" (as in, "I'm rapidly losing my marbles over this awful spelling") seems to have become "loose" (as in "set loose the dogs of war upon these miscreants"). 

It's everywhere!! In fact, it seems to be on the point of replacing the correct spelling "LOSE" altogether. I am not exaggerating when I say from my own observation, that the incorrect spelling is now more common than the correct spelling.

There are two words. One is LOSE, the other is LOOSE. They mean different things.  Yet more and more (on the Net), they are being spelled the same way. For anyone who doesn't know, here are the differences between the two words:

LOSE - to suffer deprivation of (something) 

LOSE (verb) : "I win - you lose"

LOSING (participle; adjective) : "losing my mind"; "the losing hand"

LOST (past tense) : "I lost my way"; "the lost sheep"

LOSER : "you, who cannot spell. LOL"

LOSS (noun) : "I experienced the loss of my sanity"

- - - - - - - - - 

LOOSE / LOOSEN - to untie or to set free; make less tight

LOOSE / LOOSEN (verb) : "I set loose the tiger" "I loosen my seat belt"

LOOSE (adjective) : "the belt feels loose to me"

LOOSED (past tense) : "the dogs were loosed by Montgomery Burns"

(there is no noun)

And if you already spell it correctly, then make my day - if you see LOOSE for LOSE online, put it right! And if the person gets annoyed, send them to me.  :-)

Proposed Petition to Artwiculate

Artwiculati! Please read the following, and let me know what you think. If you like it, then leave a comment for me here, and I will go ahead and post the petition in GetSatisfaction. 

If you disagree with any of the points (someone has already said that point 4 might not be practical), then please also comment. Many thanks.  

---------------------------------

We, the Artwiculati, are endlessly passionate about this wonderful game : the creative buzz of composing erudite, poetic, heartfelt, or just plain witty, tweets, and we love the social life that goes with it. Once again, we reiterate our thanks for the fact that it exists.

But, we don't feel that the social networking aspects of the game should become the measure of or means to success; we feel that there should be a 'level playing field' for all players, and we applaud your continuing efforts to achieve this.

There are a few ideas to help this even further, which have been discussed quite a lot recently. We would like to put them to you, and therefore...

We, the undersigned, being passionate about Artwiculate, humbly petition the people responsible for the running the game, as follows :

1. Please make all kinds of RT count equally. If this is not technically possible, then please stop RTs from scoring at all.

2. Please equalise the different time zones by introducing a 25-hour day for the game.

3. Please remove the voting button from individual players' profile pages, i.e. all voting to be 'blind' from the main site (this will also help to deter "voting to influence results" which undoubtedly follows on from your 'front runners' announcement)

4. Please restrict voting to the players of the game. For example : 

• only those following @artwiculate, and 

• only those with a minimum points tally, to prove they actually are players

If you, like us, believe these changes will help, please try them out for a month or two

Please respond to this, so we know what your thoughts are :-) 

What words or phrases do you hate? (1)

These I have hated

Most people have words or verbal habits they dislike intensely, or even hate. I'm no exception! So here I am going to begin what may become the first of many threads as I pour out my invective against these hapless linguistic tics.

1. Attendee

Pre-eminent among them (for me) is this sorry abortion of a word. I wish I had a time machine, so I could go back and have strong words with the twonk who first coined it. Or perhaps hit them over the head with a saucepan to prevent them polluting the gene pool :-) 

I would say to him (or her) "Weren't you taught the rules at school? Were you asleep that day? Do you REALLY want to bequeath your ignorance to the future in perpetuity? It's quite straight-forward : "

EmployER : the one who DOES THE EMPLOYING (active)

EmployEE : the one who IS EMPLOYED (passive)

And so with InterviewER / InterviewEE, ExaminER / ExaminEE, and so on.

With "attendEE", who or what IS BEING ATTENDED (passive)? Why, surely, the event itself! So the conference, seminar, workshop, meeting, or whatever, is the only "attendEE" here. The people actually ATTENDING (active) must be "attendERs". Was it too difficult in Twonk Land to see that? Sigh.

I suspect I know how it happened, or can guess. There was a confusion between being "invited" to an event (INVITEE - quite correct), with actually "attending" it. And now it's too late to correct, and we are sadly stuck with it.

2. Going forward 

I have never actually met a "normal" person (i.e. one who doesn't use this horrible phrase) who doesn't wince at the very least when they hear it. The perpetrators are nearly always company spokespeople, and maybe the occasional politician.

Sometimes it is partnered with "in the future", so we end up with the abysmal tautology "in the future going forward".

Please, people - STOP IT!! It's just NewSpeak, an Orwellian-sounding piece of pseudo-professional nonsense. It means nothing, or rather it means "in the future", or "from now on", two perfectly good English phrases which could and should be used instead.

3. Electrocution

This is a perfectly good word. When properly used. Which it isn't, often.

Its origins are quite clearly defined by the Oxford English Dictionary :

ELECTRICITY + EXECUTION

Folks, you can't survive being electrocuted! It means you're dead dead dead. It does NOT mean the same as "getting an electric shock". It means "getting an electric shock which kills you".  Clear now?

Artwiculate - some of my tweets (2)

^  thanks to @StarofSavannah for creating this picture of Ludovic

 

Artwiculate is a Twitter-based word game. Each day a new word is published, all the tweets with that word appear on the Artwiculate site, and can be voted on. Here are some more of my efforts :

"misnomer" (wrongly-named) :

The "Unsinkable" Titanic gloated at high speed over the Atlantic until her misnomer was corrected by an iceberg

Guy walks into a bar and injures his head. It was actually a steel girder . #misnomer

Shooting stars are a misnomer : they are not stars, nor do they carry guns 

I am what I am ~ not your sculptured misnomer ~ and I will survive . #haiku #GloriaGaynor #ElizaDoolittle

"indubitably" (undoubtedly):

"Holmes, I deduce that right now, Mrs Hudson is downstairs preparing a tray of tea for us" "Indubitably, Watson - it is 3:55pm"

indubitably : a short step from the Penumbra of Uncertainty into the sunlight of "Yes" .

stardust within me ~ lights my way to who I am ~ indubitably . #haiku #artwiculate

When the heart reaches higher ground & stands awed at life's new sunlit vistas, we indubitably feel that eternity is here, now

"pandiculation" (stretch & yawn):

prison pandiculation : a long stretch

When we're apart my arms stretch out / And weep at empty air / Pandiculation, in my heart / Love smiles - I find you there

"odalisque" (harem virgin):

Just be yourself - ask nothing, love, from me / And then your willing odalisque I'll be

The vanquished night, the eastern sky, a pale gold nascent disk / A new day dawns & I'm still here: Light's passionate odalisque

"surreptitiously" (furtively, with stealth):

On the eastern horizon, a rosy glow surreptitiously transforms grey to gold, a diurnal alchemy heralding the coming of the light

You phoned me repetitiously

And love-bombed me capriciously

Stole my heart surreptitiously

You're now my life, deliciously

tiptoe through my life ~ surreptitiously hoping ~ someone notices . #haiku

"gesticulate" :

Guy walks into a bar and orders a Gesticulate. Barman: "That's two fingers of Scotch, and one finger of dry ginger, right?"

The sun & rain in harmony gesticulate their adoration of this bejewelled Earth, and a rainbow is their love child.

Gesticulate : the early worm flips the bird.

I gesticulate ~ not waving but drowning ~ no-one sees . #haiku

"odious" (hateful) :

His poems were poor, his odes odious, his verse even worse

Guy walks into a bar & orders an Odious. Barman: "Beer topped up with creme-de-menthe, Coke, & Cherry soda, yes?" #NowIFeelSick

odious to part ~ our symbiosis wreckage ~ weep for lost love . #haiku

Odious - the new cologne for ex-boyfriends : "Because You're Not Worth It"

 

"symbiosis" (lifeforms joined in mutual dependancy) :

Waves die on the shore, caressing the sand which hugs them gently as they slide back into the vast ocean; symbiosis of land & sea

You and I, arm in arm, heart to heart, soul to soul. 1 + 1 = 1. Symbiosis.

music needs silence ~ sound born in space, returns home ~ symbiosis art . #haiku

Artwiculate - some of my tweets (1)

Artwiculate is a Twitter-based word game. Each day a new word is published, all the tweets with that word appear on the Artwiculate site, and can be voted on. I've been playing for 3 months, and these are some of my own efforts :

"Oneiric" (dreamlike) :

I pass through the mirror into an oneiric landscape: I walk under a green sky, on clouds lit by a billion stars beneath my feet

oneiric lives ~ terrestrial wanderers ~ chasing the dawn . #haiku

Oneiric is as oneiric.. melts the faces of time over washing lines into a metamorphosis of fish, strangeness and charm . #Dali

"Penchant" (taste for):

a cold wind blows from hell, and zombies with a penchant for beautiful thoughts are eating my brains . #cookery #eatingout

If this was the last day of your life, my friend - tell me, wouldn't you have a penchant for what each second brought you?

Oh hold me tight! Caress my penchant for you until passion's flame ignites, & we'll come to rest at last in love's afterglow. 

penchant for living ~ savouring each breath he takes ~ condemned man's last hour . #haiku

"Flibbertigibbet" (flighty - especially a young woman):

flibbertigibbet ~ flighty there, but never here ~ butterfly life  . #haiku

"Why, Mr Darcy, do you think me such a flibbertigibbet as unable to comprehend that we two inhabit a best-selling novel?"

"Brogue" (type of shoe; dialect):

Brogue - walk the talk?  

"Fungible" (interchangeable):

human beings ~ stardust, golden, unique ~ never fungible . #haiku

"Languor" (languid, listless, dreamy):

In languor deep we lay

As sun announced the day

Exhausted from the fray

Of night-long passion's play

No dragons more to slay

our anger spent ~ exhausted from the fray ~ yield to languor . #haiku

"Holy doze Batman! It's.. The Languor!" "I'm ready, Robin - coffee, amphetamine, Jane Fonda video.. I'll just take a nap first"

"Parsimonious" (stingy, mean):

Otto the odious octopus was extremely parsimonious: he'd give with one hand, and take with seven

"Yesternight":

Yesterme, yesteryou, yesternight, yesterlove . #artwiculate #StevieWonder

Sir Lancelot got Guinevere, Sir Galahad got the Grail, Sir Yesternight got to do all the washing up & cleaning

Dracula bows ~ fantasy in black velvet ~ yesternight . #haiku

Yesternight we kissed ~ scents on the breeze of today ~ love's open window . #haiku

Guy walks into a bar and orders a Yesternight. Barman: "We don't open until 6PM yesterday evening - come back then"