Ode to the Candy Machine at the University of Nebraska Press Building

For Chrissy Osmulski (1981-2015)

In the lobby of the office where I work there used to be a small candy machine perched on a pole by the elevators, the kind where if you put in a quarter and turned a crank, a mass of candies would drop down a chute, clatter through a hinged doorway, and fall neatly into your hand.  This machine, though, was different: while most candy machines have only three or four slots in a neat line, this one was a cube with slots on all sides, two on each horizontal face, with a total of eight candies to choose from.  It had M&Ms, Skittles, Reese’s Pieces, Mike and Ikes, Hot Tamales, trail mix, novelty gummy candies, and even some brown nuts of a kind I’d never seen in a vending machine.

The candy machine was the one iconic feature of the building lobby, where I spend no more than a few seconds waiting for the elevator each time I go into work.  It’s a long, rectangular lobby with entrances on either side, both of which are covered by square, flat awnings.  Oversized American flags and a potted plant attempt to instill a friendly atmosphere in the corridor, and perpendicular to the entrances large glass doors open into large offices, though both of these offices have moved and printed notices remind visitors to come to their new locations.

I noticed the candy machine on my first day because it was the one object in the lobby that actually stood out, and I swiveled around it to see the types of candy on its four faces, two of which were tilted inconveniently close to the wall.  It occurred to me that if I had a quarter (which I usually don’t—I rarely carry change anymore unless I’m doing laundry or happen to have purchased something with cash that day) I could turn the crank and get a handful of Reese’s Pieces to eat on my way home, a reward for making it through the workday.  I could also have tried the brown nuts I’d never seen in a vending machine before, or bought some Skittles to eat one at a time (since Skittles are best savored individually, rather than in a mixed handful).  I wondered how much candy one got for a quarter—had the manufacturers considered inflation by working an adjustable valve into each slot’s measuring mechanism, or did twenty-five cents buy the same number of M&Ms today as it did in 1980?  If it did, then buying candy from the machine might be a better deal than buying it in single-serving bags from the gas station, a bargain the building owners may or may not have foreseen.

Then, one day, the machine disappeared.  When I came into work and found it not in its usual spot, I looked first to the other end of the lobby to check whether a thorough janitor or furniture mover had placed it there temporarily, but it wasn’t at the other end of the lobby either.  Nor was it there the next time I came, or the time after that, and even though the American flags and potted plant were always in their same places, the candy machine wasn’t.

I often remember how the candy machine’s compartments were always full, and though I’d initially considered this an illusion maintained by slanted surfaces inside the case, it occurred to me that fewer people passing through the lobby meant fewer candy purchases, and fewer of those people carrying change meant fewer purchases still.  I wonder how much money the building owners made from the machine, or whether some rental agreement had actually caused them to lose money by keeping it there.  I also wonder whether I could have halted them from removing it if I myself had started carrying change and actually used the machine.  I wonder what those brown nuts tasted like and what they’re called; I can’t describe them exactly, but would know them if I saw them again.  But most of all, I wonder about the men who’d come while I was away and pulled the machine down the outside ramp on to a truck, and whether they’d taken that truck to a warehouse somewhere with all the other candy machines no one wanted.  If I’d happened to be walking in the day they were bringing the machine out, I could have done nothing more than watch them from the back stairs. 

I miss the machine now that it’s gone, since there’s nothing else in the lobby to look at, and without it I find my thoughts at the beginning and end of the day much emptier than they used to be, with fewer things left about which to wonder.

Five Reasons to Score Euchre with the 5's

A euchre score of three points. The flipped card is a 5, and each uncovered diamond is worth one point.

My dad’s originally from Michigan, so I grew up playing euchre (pronounced you-kur) the same as they do in the Midwest.  It's a fast-paced game played with two sets of partners, and only half the deck (9’s to Aces).  Since a team needs ten points to win a game, we grew up scoring with the extra 5’s, two for each team.  As shown in the pictures, players keep score by uncovering one symbol for every point up to five, then flipping the top 5 and scoring the remaining points up to ten.  It’s easy to score and easy to read.

A score of nine points (5 + 4).

Then I met some people from Chicago who grew up scoring with 6’s and 4’s, provoking an ongoing debate about which method works better.  I’ve tried both ways and will choose 5’s every time—here are some reasons why:

Which team's winning?  (You had to think about it, didn't you?)

#1. The 5's Are Easier to Read

The world uses a number system based on 10.  Half of 10 is 5, and it’s easier to think in terms of 5 than in terms of, say, 3 or 9, since we intrinsically read 5 as half of 10.  The uncovered top 5 clearly indicates that the game is more than half won, and makes it easier to add the bottom points to the top.  Using a 6 and a 4 slows the math down—it’s just that much infinitesimally easier to add 3 + 5 than to add 3 + 4, and such hurdles can slow you down when you're trying to count your opponent’s trump.

Who's ahead now?  (Had to think about that one too, didn't you?)

#2. No Confusion About Who's On Top

Like a good relationship, with 5’s it doesn’t matter which one’s on top: flip one over and you’re ready to go.  The 6’s and 4’s, however, beg the question of whether to score the 6 or the 4 first, and if both teams choose differently (see above), there’ll be a confusing imbalance if the 4-scoring team flips the top card first and the 6-scoring team has more points.

 

#3. Flipping Unnecessary Cards

This is really my biggest beef with 4's and 6's.  If you start with the 6 on the bottom and the 4 flipped over, you have to score the first six points, then flip the 4 over and put it on the bottom before placing the six on top to make seven (see above).  If you think you can avoid this extra step by starting with the 4, you're in for a rude surprise: you still have to place a card in back.

With 5’s, though, there’s one step.  Score the first 5, flip the top card, then score the second 5 (see above).  Easy.

#4. Finding the 5’s is Faster

But Ian, my Illinois readers might protest, when you’re sorting the cards for euchre, surely scooping the 6’s and 4’s out of the deck is faster, because you can find them more quickly, right?  Not so!   

Since there are only four 5’s in the deck, all the 5’s get used, and sorting a 52-card deck becomes a simple matter of dealing out the 9’s 10’s, Jacks, Queens, Kings, and Aces for regular play, and the four 5’s for scoring.  It’s a set, clean system with no extra cards.

Are you tired of endless, sloppy clutter during your euchre game?

With 6’s and 4’s though, there are eight possible scoring cards in the deck (four 6’s and four 4’s), so players doing the sorting have to remember how many 6’s and 4’s they’ve separated or they’ll end up with extras to throw back in.  There’s more cards to sort, and more cards to worry about.

Try scoring with the 5s instead!

#5. The Beauty of a Color Match

Two black 5’s for one team, two red 5’s for the other.  Each team has its own color, with no confusion on the board.  You can do that with 6’s and 4’s, of course, but you have to find the exact cards you need from a pile of extras.  Doing it this way also creates an odd imbalance, say, if one team has two hearts and the other has a club and a spade.  You can still have color symmetry, but it takes more work to do it—which is precisely how I feel about the whole 4’s and 6’s system.  It gets the job done fine, but it takes more work and effort that could otherwise be spent playing the game.

Allow me to copy the same photo I just used as proof of how clean this looks.

Don’t send a boy to do a man’s job.  Use the 5’s next time.

Hiebner Teaches Ian About the Midwest: A Play in One Act

IAN and HIEBNER sit working at computers in adjacent cubicles.  On IAN’s screen are pictures of farms and farming equipment.  He considers one photo with confusion and, after some thought, pokes his head over the cubicle wall.

IAN: Hey Hiebner, what do you call those long things with the wheels that farmers have in their fields.  I think they’re for spraying or something.

HIEBNER (nonchalantly): Those are pivots, or you can call them circle pivots.  They’re for watering, and what’s really cool is when you see pictures of fields with circle pivots taken from the sky and the whole field is just these huge circles of green.

IAN: Okay, thanks.

IAN returns to his computer and types something.  Several beats later, he pokes his head over the cubicle wall again.

IAN: Hey Hiebner, what do you call it when the machines are gathering up hay from a field, and they bundle it up in this big roll—like a really big one?

HIEBNER: A bale?

IAN: I thought bales were for rectangles of hay.

HIEBNER: Either one.  You can call it a circle bale if you want.

IAN: Okay, thanks.

IAN returns to his computer, types something, and this time immediately pokes his head over the cubicle wall again.

IAN: Hey, what do you call…

REPEAT performance until audience gets up and leaves.

Why I Don't Like Direct Deposit

I get paid by direct deposit now (on the last day of the month, unless that day is a weekend or holiday, in which case the money goes in on the business day immediately preceding), though I miss the days when I first began working and got paid weekly by check.  This was at Market Basket, where every Thursday after one or two o’clock the paychecks would come in on a truck, and you had to go to the courtesy booth and tell the woman (it was always a woman) behind the glass your employee number, after which she would rifle through the stack of paychecks and slip yours through the slot between the glass and the counter.  If you went right at one o’clock this usually took longer because there were still many checks to rifle through, but if you went on the weekend the woman was usually able to find yours without much time at all.

I didn’t think about this then, but having a physical paycheck and stub (in my case the kind where you tore off three of the edges and the stub came open, still folded on its fourth edge with the paycheck loose inside) provided a physical reminder of the work you’d done, and that you were being rewarded for it with money, the reason you went to work in the first place.  Sure, the paycheck was only cheap paper with numbers and a printed signature, but the act of tearing it open, signing it, and depositing it at the bank linked the act of working with the reward of having money.

Now, though, the money goes directly into my checking account without my seeing how, and though I can check the same numbers on my computer or a deposit receipt, there’s no talk of money when I’m at work, or anything that associates money with work at all.  When I’m at work now and people talk about money, they speak of the rewards of their labors as being disassociated with the act of work itself, as if the money was being deposited into their accounts on its own, as if work and money were completely separate.  Though we all know that the money we receive comes because we performed work that month, there’s very little within the working experience to remind us that this is true.

When we forget that money comes because of work and that work leads to earning money, we start doing the work without understanding why, and spending the money without remembering where it came from.  Work becomes an aspect of life rather than a chore done to earn a reward, something we do without thinking, that we’ve always done and continue to do, while the money flows in and out like the water from a tap that we know not to waste but leave turned on anyway. 

Such disassociations are dangerous because they make it more difficult to leave a job we don’t like, or are ready to move on from.  The more passively we view earning money, the harder it is for us to risk disrupting the flow.  I try not to forget that, even if I don’t have a tear-away pay stub anymore.

Workers Say, Academics Say

People at Work Say...	Academics Say...
Get hired	Get funding
Get a raise	Get more funding
Work overtime	Have a large courseload
Look for a job	Go on the [job] market
Boss	Adviser
Co-workers	Colleagues
Work, the office	Campus (or building name)
TGIF	ABD (All But Dissertation)

Academia, I've noticed, carries with it a language all its own, often meant to distance the work performed by professors, adjunct faculty, research assistants, and graduate students from the language of traditional 9 to 5 office or labor jobs.  Money, for instance, is referred to less in terms of salaries or paychecks, but instead as funding, and those looking for a new job are said to be on the market (as if they were planning to purchase a new beach house or sport utility vehicle).

What is the purpose of such distancing?  Avoiding the language of the working world creates the impression that the tasks performed by academics aren't actually work at all, but something greater and more important.  This, however, makes more sense when referring to writing or research performed of one's own volition and far less sense when a research assistant performs the same data entry a low-ranking temp would be paid an hourly wage to type out in a cubicle.

Academic jobs involve work the same as any other jobs, and to pretend that they don't is to allow for the type of exploitation worthy of an Upton Sinclair novel.  Considering that academia is experiencing an adjunct crisis as more and more high-paying professor jobs with benefits are transferred to low-paying adjunct jobs with no benefits, one would think that academics everywhere would want to unite themselves with the rest of the workforce by not referring to the work they do as somehow deserving of its own vocabulary.

The new academia is a scary place.

Low-Stakes Fun

I think a lot about writing purely for low-stakes fun (e.g. this blog) and how I don't do it as often as I'd like anymore.  I still keep a journal, which fulfills my need for personal reflection, but I miss pursuing more of the random ideas that spark into something more worthwhile than a Facebook message, but less tangible than a short story.  The things this blog used to be full of.

A big part of this has to do with my being in graduate school (where I've been for over a year), where such writing is hardly encouraged (long story), and social pressures tend to favor a more professional discourse of literary fiction (if such a term even has meaning anymore) published in magazines of note (or those that purport to be of note) to build one's CV (which, unlike a one-page employment resume, concerns itself chiefly with length).  Before graduate school, before work on the novel even, I made more time for this blog and for other low-stakes writing that kept the ideas flowing, kept me writing actively.  I spend more time writing now than I did then, though most of what I do now is novel- or larger project-related work, which in many ways I find disappointing.

Does this shift represent a maturing move toward more important endeavors, or a dwindling of my creative energy in favor of a more regimented structure?  To even phrase the problem in this way disgusts me.  Why can't I continue to work on a myriad of projects, fitting each one into its proper place on a smaller or larger scale that suits that individual idea?

Time, mostly.  There's never enough time.

Have to keep trying, though.

How to Write an Em Dash in Microsoft Word

A hyphen connects a pair of words to make a compound word, like this:

I ate six slices of pizza and got a stomach-ache.

An em dash, though, sets apart elements of a sentence that explain something, similar to a comma or a pair of parentheses:

The traveling vacuum cleaner salesman—always a nuisance to neighborhood residents—hadn't been seen in several weeks.

The hyphen ( - ) is short, while the em dash ( — ) is much longer.  The two look different on the printed page and shouldn't be confused, though confusion often arises because there's no em dash key on a standard keyboard.  Many writers will type hyphens or double hyphens in place of em dashes, which look silly and unprofessional. 

Here's how to type an em dash using Microsoft Word:



1. Type out the text before the em dash, without a space.

2. Press the hyphen key twice.

 

3. Again, without using a space, type the word you want to follow the em dash.

4. Now, hit Space. Word will automatically substitute the em dash for you.

Alternately, Windows users can access the em dash using the Character Map, that long list of special characters like ©,  ¥,  Ω, ∆, and ♫, to name but a few.  To access the Character Map, click the Start menu, then All Programs, then Accessories, then System Tools, and finally, Character Map.  You'll find the em dash near the end next to its seldom-used cousin, the en dash, and its special character cousin the horizontal bar.

Once you've located the em dash, click Select to pull it into the box at the bottom of the window, then Copy to add it to the clipboard.  You can then paste it into MS Word and other programs as needed.



Writers: use proper em dash formatting whenever possible!  It makes you look more professional, it's easier on the eyes, and it saves your editors manuscript cleanup time down the road.  You should also know the word processing tools of your trade the same way carpenters know their hammers, biologists know their microscopes, and golfers know their clubs.  There's no reason not to.