The Less-Frequently Discussed Second Half of the "You're Not Special" Speech

In this blog’s time-honored tradition of providing commentary on cutting-edge issues that everyone’s already forgotten about, I present for your enjoyment the “You’re Not Special” Wellesley high school graduation speech.


Youtube’s great and all, but I really recommend reading the full transcript.

For those who haven’t heard (or haven’t clicked above), last month, English teacher David McCullough told the entire 2012 graduating class of Wellesley high school, their families, their friends, and (after the resulting media frenzy) the world, that if everyone was special then no one is, that in 2012 American high schools would graduate 37,000 valedictorians and 37,000 class presidents, and that today’s graduates have been pampered and complimented all of their young lives instead of experiencing the hardships they needed to grow. This of course got people talking more than the humdrum “Go out and achieve!” speeches usually do. Most commentators (Rush Limbaugh included) took McCullough’s side, launching rants against the younger generation comparable to an angry grandfather waving his cane at the neighborhood kids for wearing sideways caps and low-riders.

But I don’t want to talk about those things because they’ve all been said before. I, however, am more interested in another section of McCullough’s speech that antsier Youtube viewers might not have reached:

In our unspoken but not so subtle Darwinian competition with one another—which springs, I think, from our fear of our own insignificance, a subset of our dread of mortality—we have of late, we Americans, to our detriment, come to love accolades more than genuine achievement. We have come to see them as the point - and we're happy to compromise standards, or ignore reality, if we suspect that's the quickest way, or only way, to have something to put on the mantelpiece, something to pose with, crow about, something with which to leverage ourselves into a better spot on the social totem pole. No longer is it how you play the game, no longer is it even whether you win or lose, or learn or grow, or enjoy yourself doing it… Now it's "So what does this get me?" As a consequence, we cheapen worthy endeavors, and building a Guatemalan medical clinic becomes more about the application to Bowdoin than the well-being of Guatemalans.

McCullough’s explanation for why we love praise and awards more than personal fulfillment is, I fear, accurate, because if we’re constantly in competition with each other for the best grades, the best colleges, and the best jobs, then deeds that bring those rewards closer to our trembling grasp become all the more precious. It makes us desperate to get the things we want: we’d do anything. In a dishonest world, if we don’t take the fabulous prizes by any means necessary, then someone else will. If the average high-school senior, worried about getting into the college of his or her choice, was faced with whether to carefully research and prepare a term paper for a class in which he or she already had an A, or join an overcrowded after-school club whose leadership qualities would look really good on a college application, which would that student choose? How often have you seen a co-worker follow correct protocol, say something intelligent, or work a lot of overtime not because it was the right thing to do, but because the boss was watching?

The most satisfying actions aren’t always the ones that carry the most reward. The girl who wrote all those Twilight books earned far more fame and riches than John Kennedy Toole ever did for writing A Confederacy of Dunces, but which will likely last longer? Moving past the soundbites, McCullough’s speech speech actually calls for a more honest world where people work to produce something real (like a Guatemalan medical clinic) and not just to fill up their resumes with important-sounding achievements and program names.

 And I’m not just saying that because I got rejected from Bowdoin back in high school

We're Pleased to Bring You a Short Essay on Public Relations Writing

Writing for public relations is different than other kinds of writing. If I am at work and something bad happens, I must present it in such a way so that it appears as if something bad has not happened. (Failing this, I should present it in such a way that does not make my organization appear negligent or broken-down.) Public relations writing must create a fantasy that everything is going perfectly well. Organizations are always excited to present something, proud of something else, pleased to announce this, and regretting to inform you of that. I must spin negatives into positives, and when I share bad news, it is with an apology for the inconvenience. I cannot show you any of this writing, for I am embarrassed to have created it. You would not recognize me in it.

However, if I’m writing for myself and something bad happens in that writing, I am always honest about that bad thing and how it affected the characters involved. I do not want bad things to happen in my writing any more than I want bad things to happen in real life, but in describing them honestly, as they occurred, they take on a power that people can feel, understand, and appreciate. That thing becomes real, and we can appreciate the full power of that terrible thing.

The terrible lows of writing not bound by an organization’s constraints also brings with it dizzying highs; for when our minds are open to honest writing we also become receptive to all the emotions that come with it. No one could ever be open to a novel that began A friendly reminder that... for readers, knowing that the reminder is not at all friendly (and may actually be less friendly than a normal reminder), will shut off their minds to what follows. We live in a world saturated with the worst kind of bland, uninspired, official-sounding English meant to disguise truth in a cloud of euphemism.  How frightening to think that it might affect our ability to digest the writing that really matters.

School Administrative Office Fill-In Game

Instructions: There's a problem at the school, and the office assistant needs some help! Fill in the blanks in the sentences below using one of the choices under (A), (B), (C), or (D):

Office Assistant: Is it OK to (A) ____________________?
Principal: (B) ______, because if (C) __________, then (D) __________.
Office Assistant: I see.

(A)
...sign this welcome letter?
...let this kid with a broken leg use the elevator by himself?
...remove this tick from a junior high girl’s scalp?
...ask a fifth grader to help me move this very large and heavy fish tank?
...give Tylenol to this girl who’s having menstrual cramps but doesn’t want to tell me?
...post pictures from the science fair on the school website?
...let this kid go home with his grandmother without a note, even though I talked to the mother about it earlier today?

(B)
No...
I wouldn’t if I were you...
Uh-uh...
You’d better not...
Technically, we're not supposed to...

(C)
...anything in that letter was inaccurate or could be claimed as false advertising…
...the cable suddenly snapped and the elevator hurtled downward into the basement...
...the tick burst, spewing lyme disease-filled puss everywhere...
...that fish tank fell on his foot...
...you gave the wrong dosage and she had to have her stomach pumped...
...any of those parents didn’t want their children to be photographed...
...there were to be a car accident, kidnapping, fire, molestation, abusive situation, air raid, or if the kid got sick or had an allergic reaction to something in the car or tripped and fell on the front stairs or bit down on his popsicle too hard and cut his tongue or got really upset and cried a lot on the ride home...

(D)
...the parents would sue the school, they’d sue me, and then they’d sue you
...you’d be legally responsible
...you’d be held liable for that
...it’d be a legal nightmare, and you’d be dead in the center of it
...there’d be grounds for a lawsuit, and you wouldn’t like that very much, now would you?

Officespeak Dissected: On the Overuse of Myself

From the Journal of Contemporary Linguistic Study, Volume 21, Issue 2:


Because Officespeak as a dialect spoken by middle- and lower-level administrative workers and bearing its own unique vocabulary, idioms, and grammatical structure has only recently come under the close scrutiny of linguists, many of its idiosyncratic uses (or usages, as Officespeakers would say) have not yet been isolated for further study. This journal proposes to chronicle some of the emerging distinctions drawn between Officespeak and our own variety of Common English.

One of Officespeak’s most widespread traits is its use of the reflexive pronoun myself to increase the formality of a sentence. Consider the following Officespeak sentences alongside their common English equivalents:

Example #1:
Mr. Graham and myself are expecting you in the meeting room by 3:30. (Officespeak)
Mr. Graham and I are expecting you in the meeting room by 3:30. (Common)

Example #2:
He gave copies of the guest list to Donald and myself to proofread. (Officespeak)
He gave copies of the guest list to Donald and me to proofread. (Common)

Example #3:
Return this letter, signed and dated, directly to myself. (Officespeak)
Return this letter, signed and dated, directly to me. (Common)

Linguists theorize that Officespeak’s use of myself in place of I or me deviated from Standard English in one of two ways:


Theory 1: Base Uncertainty: As in the first two sentences, Officespeak’s myself often appears when the speaker is referring to both himself and another person. The speaker may have been unsure whether to use I (a subject pronoun) or me (an object pronoun) and thus risk appearing unprofessional by making the mistake. Myself, however, shrouds the sentence in a more formal tone whose grammatical structure is more difficult to decipher (one of the dialect’s main purposes), ensuring that the mistake will not be noticed. Over time, use of myself grew to include sentences in which the speaker refers only to one person, as in Example #3. (For a more thorough discussion of this transition, see Hartwick pp 17-293.)



Theory 2: The Fear of Unprofessionalism: In common English, small children are often criticized by teachers and pedantic parents for making the following error:

X Josh and me got really wet!
O Josh and I got really wet!

The top sentence is wrong because the italicized portion is a subject, not an object. However, using Josh and me is correct when it serves as the sentence’s object:

O Ryan splashed Josh and me with water!

If this is still confusing, try reading the sentences without Josh around to muck them up:

O I got really wet!
O Ryan splashed me with water!

However, through overcorrection, many children learn to shun using Josh and me in both cases, thus transposing the taboo onto both subject (correctly) and object (incorrectly). When attempting to form a sentence that would accurately use Josh and me (see Example sentence #2), the Officespeaker substitutes myself, fearing that any use of Josh and me would be viewed as improper.  Kincaid M. Fowler, the theory’s leading proponent, reasons that Officespeakers attempted to escape their childhood humiliations instead of correcting them, and widespread Officespeak use of myself then grew to include subjects (as in Example #1) and objects without a second noun (Example #3).

Altered use of other reflexive pronouns (yourself, themselves, etc.) has not yet been adequately documented among Officespeakers, though the linguistic community is currently awaiting a promising study of the speech patterns of manufacturing accountants in the 128 corridor of northeastern Massachusetts.

Stock Responses

The Scene: Our hero, on a break with a co-worker, is discussing a recent string of terrorist scares in which white powder was mailed to schools around the continental US.

“Everyone thinks it couldn’t happen up here,” my co-worker says with an air of authoritative experience, “but if it did, as soon as you opened that envelope, there’d be that moment when suddenly, BAM—you’re in the real world.”

“That’s true,” I agree. “I don’t think people consider serious threats a possibility, though I also don’t really like the term “real world” because, I mean, we all live in the real world—”

In the middle of this sentence my co-worker’s eyes take on a vacant, glazed look, his mouth forcibly curls upward into a smile, and his cheeks crease unnaturally with the strain of listening to something he is so clearly not interested in, for he is annoyed by my insinuation that he has just used a clichéd term inappropriately and could not care less about my interpretation of the phrase “real world.” That’s when he says it, in a long, slow drawl:

“Yuh-huh.”

More and more often I find myself noticing moments like these when my interlocutor acts on his or her obvious disinterest by either changing the subject or (more commonly) using a stock response. In this instance I am uncertain whether the culprit is simple disinterest or my having chosen to speak at all. Or, is it a fear that I may take the conversation to a place in which my co-worker has no bearing, and thus nothing to articulate? (He would have to be quiet, then, and might become embarrassed if it appeared that I knew something he did not know. After all, he is older than me.)

The stock responses people regurgitate in these situations have no real meaning, but are easy to say and create the illusion that the person is listening or interested in the topic at hand. (To my great disgust, they have also become more socially acceptable.) Common examples include:

I know!
Oh, sure.
Definitely!
Absolutely!
Amen to that.
Yeah, I know, right?

Stock responses are often accompanied by a lack of eye contact, forced smiles like the one described above, an overabundance of laughter, or continued involvement in a task or activity while speaking. I believe the majority of people accept these encounters as a conversational norm (particularly in the workplace or when meeting people at parties before the alcohol has worked its desired effect), but we don’t have to let this happen. If we all listened more, made more of an effort to engage ourselves in what other people had to say, and focused less on sharing personal accomplishments, our conversations would flow more genuinely. They would also be more interesting, and talking to others would be more fun. It would be a more dynamic world.

But there are a lot of people out there, and a lot of them are stuck in this conversational rut. Is it too late for some of them whose souls have been dulled by years of flagrantly self-centered behavior? I wish I had the answer.

Fuck Your Impractical Hipster Room Decorations

That the photo blog Fuck Your Noguchi Coffee Table has as many followers as it does proves conclusively that other people like making fun of hipsters as much as I do. Maybe more.


By posting the worst examples of ultra-hip interior decorating, Fuck Your Noguchi Coffee Table sends a clear message that it’s not cool to copy designs that you saw on the internet, it’s not cool to buy quirky old things when you’re under thirty-five, and it’s not cool to own a terrarium. Actually, it’s pretty ridiculous to do all of those things, and the more of its bland abominations you look at, the clearer the uninspired repetition of fashion clichés becomes. Here’s another example:


Ignoring the dangerously low-hanging chandelier for a moment, take a look at this picture. At first glance, it may appear interesting, aesthetically pleasing, unique, etc, but then look closer. What is this a picture of? Stacks of books on a table. The whole table. This presents the question of why the occupants of this apartment have chosen to render useless a perfectly good table that could otherwise have been used for eating, card-playing, building model airplanes, spontaneous after-dinner lovemaking, or blueprint examination. This may appear to be a perfectly logical way to display one’s book collection (as one might display an athletic trophy or a soda bottle from an exotic country) until one considers that books meant to be opened and read, and the whole purpose of vertically storing books spine-outward on a bookshelf is so they can be easily removed and used for this purpose. If books are stacked one on top of another, removing one for reading becomes a tedious exercise as one must either slide the uppermost books to one side or awkwardly move the upper portion of the stack into a separate stack as one attempts to retrieve the desired book. And this is made more difficult by there being a fucking vase thing on top of the books. How is anyone supposed to read anything on that table without accomplishing a minor feat of acrobatics?

The stacks of books epitomizes my problem with these designs: they stress looks over practicality. For the people who took these photos, books are meant to be looked at, not read; vintage typewriters are meant to be admired, not used (we have computers for that); and oversized taxonomic illustrations are meant to provide rooms with character, not actual information.

I prefer rooms that look lived in, imperfectly designed, and even a little messy. I feel more comfortable in them. If a room looks like something out of a magazine cover, I feel as if I’ve wandered into a place I don’t belong, as if my being there has thrown off the intricate balance that the designer hoped to achieve. (There are no people in the Fuck Your Noguchi Coffee Table photos.) An ideal room need not be curated to achieve a desired result; it should evolve naturally through the objects we bring to it because those objects mean something to us or just happened to catch our eye. That's a look that can't be faked.

Worlds of Power: Mega Man 2 (A Review)

Isn’t it a little strange that our hero has chosen to attack Quick Man with his bare fists?

The Worlds of Power book series was a moneymaking scheme concocted by marketing extraordinaire Seth Godin to sell video-game based books to adolescent boys who spent most of their free time playing NES (though, to be fair, anything that helps adolescent boys enjoy reading can only be a good thing). The series included novelizations of Metal Gear, Castlevania 2, and Ninja Gaiden, as well as two junior edition books for younger readers: Mega Man 2 and Bases Loaded 2. All contained helpful game hints in upside-down boxes, though sadly, none included the quintessential center insert with eight pages of color photos.

In the Mega Man 2 novelization, author Ellen Miles imagines the eponymous character as a whiny eight-year old with a limited vocabulary and a penchant for clichés like “cool your jets” and “he was just full of hot air.” The plot proceeds as follows: Mega Man is transported to a robot boss’s lair, kills some enemies, then easily defeats the boss. Repeat seven times, and then add in a slightly expanded version for Dr. Wily’s castle. There’s also a poorly-developed subplot where Mega Man accidentally becomes human and must deal with his newfound emotions for the first time, but this was handled a lot better in the movie Blade Runner. Several times in the book, Mega Man encounters obstacles like oversized enemies, or weapons that seem to have no effect on the bosses, but each of these challenges is quickly remedied as the Blue Bomber continues on his quest (fortunately, the author leaves out the part of the game where you choose the wrong boss, find out that all your weapons are useless, and have to go back and choose another).

The most annoying loyalty to the game comes when Mega Man has to fight all eight robots a second time by going through teleportation machines. Instead of omitting this relatively unimportant scene, in an act of deft narrative summary, Miles describes each battle in a single alliterative sentence (“He wiped out Wood Man,” etc), leaving only Air Man’s battle described in minor detail (presumably because she couldn’t think of a destructive verb beginning with A).

To make things more exciting for younger readers, the author also litters the book with italicized KaBoom!s, Whump!s, Pow!s, and FWOOSH!s of the type one might expect from the Adam West Batman series. Even more annoying is Bubble Man’s habit of inserting underwater sounds into his speech, which is poorly handled at best:

Mega Man swam through the gates. Bubble Man was waiting for him. “Mega blorble man!” he cried. “How gurgle dare you enter my king-burrble-dom!

While I’m quoting, here’s a typical example of the author’s attention to detail:

The door to the Robo-Transometer* swung open, letting in a stream of light. Mega Man stirred. His head hurt.

“My head hurts,” he said.

*Robo-Transometer (n): a machine capable of both cloning robots and making them human.

The Game Tips (requiring the reader to turn the book upside-down like a Slylock Fox puzzle) range from revealing enemy weaknesses to laughably basic advice (“To kill Air Man, carefully jump the tornadoes to get close to him”). Amazingly, later in the book, the same tip is repeated twice within ten pages (“To get to Heat Man, use the C weapon to cut through the wall”), meaning that either the editor got a little lazy, or this tip was so important that it had to be repeated twice for the forgetful reader.

I’m probably being a little hard on this book considering it had a target audience of eight year-old boys back in 1989, but it was a fun way to kill a half hour. I definitely had a good time making fun of this book that I wouldn’t have had making fun of a book based on Call of Duty 4 because childhood memories of the gameplay, however cheesy, made it fun. While one can’t possibly attribute any objectivity to this nostalgia, it will add a noticeable degree of enjoyment for any twentysomethings who grew up with NES.

Or, you could skip the book and watch this video of James Rolfe reading it in its entirity instead.