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Downworthy: The Answer to All Those Stupid Headlines

I loathe the link-bait bullshit that’s taken over my Facebook newsfeed. Upworthy. Opposing Views. Even The Huffington Post. They’re all guilty to varying degrees.

Call me a snob, if you will. I was a journalist for 20 years, and I like my headlines straightforward and to the point. All I see these days is shit that goes something like, “Michael asked his mom for a Pepsi. What came next will blow your mind.”

Mood music:

My friend Alison Gianotto, chief technology officer at Noise, hates it too. Instead of merely rolling her eyes as I do, she built a free, highly amusing browser plug-in called Downworthy that’s currently available for Google Chrome. When you add it to your browser, a little icon of poop makes itself at home in your toolbar.

Turn it on and it’ll take all those hyperbolic headlines and replace them with something snarky that people like me consider more realistic. For example, “Be Overused So Much That You’ll Silently Pray for the Sweet Release of Death to Make it Stop” is translated to “Be Overused So Much That You’ll Silently Pray for the Sweet Release of Death to Make It Stop.”

A couple examples of the end result:

winter phenom

glacier lake

When you’re having a hard day and Upworthy throws all that annoying garbage your way, this plug-in will make you feel better.

Life is hard. Some days the challenges threaten to drown us. You certainly can’t blame the publishers of Upworthy for that. It’s simply how life is sometimes.

But if a toy like this can distract us from the darkness, if only for a few minutes, it will help us live to fight the next battle.

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“It’s a Miserable Life,” Starring Chief O’Brien

Of all the Star Trek series, Deep Space 9 (DS9) remains my favorite. It has the best character development and explores the darker side of humanity in a way the other shows wouldn’t have dared.

Mood music:

DS9 explores constant misery through Chief Myles O’Brien. In one episode he is put into a 20-minute program that simulates a 20-year prison sentence. In another, an evil spirit possesses his wife, Keiko. Then there is the episode where he agreed to partake in Worf’s Klingon-style bachelor party. That might have been where he received the most torture of all.

But if you look at the big picture, DS9 was a hell of a lot more fun for him than his previous posting on the USS Enterprise. There, he was transporter chief, arguably one of the most boring jobs on the ship.

In Chief O’Brien at Work,” cartoonist Jon Adams deliciously nails the boredom O’Brien feels standing at his post. As Adams writes in the opening:

If you’ve ever felt lost and worthless, step aside, because someone else feels even more so, and his name is Chief O’Brien of the Starship Enterprise. Fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation, crappy jobs, and ennui will enjoy our short-lived Chief O’Brien at Work comics.

If you’re a Star Trek fan or you just happen to need a laugh, you need to pay this site a visit.

I’ll end with one of my favorites:
Chief O'Brien At Work

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Depressed Web Servers and Other Amusing 404 Pages

I write a lot about my own episodes of depression and that of others. But I’ve never written about a web server suffering from it. That is, until the student chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) gave me reason to do so.

The students got creative with a 404 File Not Found page.

Instead of the usual 404, you get a depressed web server going on and on about how dismal it is to be a server that can’t deliver a simple web page. It then goes on to suggest that we users ask for too much. After all, it’s not like the server knows us.

A sample of what it says:

depressed server

Variations of this message have been kicking around for at least three years. It just so happens that I’m only now getting around to seeing it, thanks to a Facebook share from my friend Alex Howard.

As I was researching the background of the ACM’s work, I came across plenty more creative 404 pages. I’m finding them at the right time, as I’m in a bit of a snit today. The clever lightheartedness is just what the doctor ordered.

Mashable.com has an epic slideshow of “35 Entertaining 404 Messages.” A few of my favorites:
404 Spaghetti-Os

Broke the Internet

Star Wars 404

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Mental Disorders on Sesame Street

The image below is a brilliant exercise in humor, an important coping tool for getting through all life’s difficulties. I’ve always believed the folks behind Sesame Street should be doing more to educate children on mental health, starting with some hard but necessary lessons in disorder. I share this meme for their benefit. Class is in session.

Sesame Street Disorders

Source: fodrizzle

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OC/DC

A while back I mentioned a problem I was having with my guitars, a problem only someone with OCD would have. Yesterday, a buddy shared a cartoon that illustrates another problem I could find myself dealing with if I ever decide to play live again:

OCD guitarist

Well, that wouldn’t really happen. But it made me laugh.

I think that the title should read OC/DC, however. I get the need to have O-C-D together. But it just doesn’t look right if it’s going to be a tribute to AC/DC.

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Curse of the OCD Guitarist

For all it’s power as a tool for staying in the moment, there’s one thing about my guitar playing that’s set off a big OCD trigger.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:4vhTm7eeqJAW4Iq3grUutI]

Is it the need to play constantly, every day? Nope.

Is it the nagging obsession to acquire a Gibson Les Paul? Nah. I have that obsession, but it’s not OCD. It’s the desire of many guitarists, except for those who already own one.

Here’s my problem, as told in three photos:

Crooked Music Man

As you can see, the Music Man guitar on the right is crooked. It makes me crazy.

Crooked Epiphone

I fix it, only to discover that the Epiphone Les Paul Junior on the left is crooked, too. It torments me.

Straightened Epiphone

That’s a little better. But I keep staring and wondering: Is the Music Man crooked again?

There’s only one remedy for this torment: picking up one of them and getting on with my practice.

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A Revere Kid Celebrates National Grammar Day. Punk-uation, Anyone?

Tomorrow is National Grammar Day. For writers and copyeditors (my wife is both), this is kind of like St. Patrick’s Day and Easter rolled into one. Erin plans to stay glued to her desk all day, weighing in on all the conversation that comes rolling off the Twitter tongue. Given her job, she has no choice, really.

Mood music:

Being a writer and editor myself, I should be just as excited. But I’m from Revere, Mass., where destroying grammar is a rite of passage. And since I write more often than edit, I’ve developed a rather cantankerous relationship with the copyeditors I work with. Sure, I love ’em and all, but sometimes I can’t help but slip in deliberately bad grammar for fun.

Split infinitives? Love ’em. One-line paragraphs? Love ’em. Saying “love ’em” instead of “I love them”? Love that, too.

Coming from Revere, I usually speak without the use of the letter r at the end of a word when it’s supposed to be there. I also use things like killa and pissa at random.

There was a time when I tried to conform. Once I realized I wanted to write, I chose English as a major and communications as a minor. I buried myself in the art and law of sentence structure, punctuation and even speech. I took a public speaking class specifically to work on saying the r at the end of the right words.

You could say I was turning my back on my Revere heritage.

As I hit middle age, my rebellious streak re-asserted itself.

All that said, I am grateful for the editors in my life, especially my wife, for trying to keep me on the write path. (You see what I did there?)

Happy National Grammar Day, y’all.

SuperGrammar_NationalGrammarDay_01

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Packing For #RSAC and #BSidesSF 2013: An OCD Case Study

I’m preparing to pack for five days in San Francisco, where I’ll be writing about goings on at RSA Conference 2013 and Security B-Sides. When you have OCD, packing a suitcase is as ritualistic as the compulsive hand washing you’ve heard about.

Mood music:

Before I had the OCD under control, packing was an all-day affair. I’d line up all my pants, shirts, socks, suit coats and accessories in order of the days I planned to wear them. I would undergo a similar ritual when gathering toothpaste, the razor, pills, etc. I would always pack extra for fear that I’d be without socks on the second-to-last day of the trip.

I still keep track of what I stuff into the suitcase to ensure I have enough for each day of the trip. But I only look over my cargo twice. It takes less time to do it that way than when I used to look things over five to 10 times.

Packing the laptop bag has gotten easier. I used to cram five notebooks and a handful of pens in there. Now it’s one pen and no notebooks. At this stage of my career, I’m pretty good at storing notes in my head. I don’t let it sit in my head for too long. I usually write up the talks and demos within 10 minutes of seeing them. Some talks, I write the story while I’m sitting there watching.

I also don’t stuff my pockets with cigars and cigarettes anymore. That allows for more room. There are the e-cigs, but they take up less space.

Some things will never change. I’ll always try to get to the airport three hours before the flight because I always worry about unexpected problems and want time to fix what needs fixing. People think that’s crazy and it probably is. This year I’m being a little more bold. I plan to get there exactly two hours before the flight, but that’s because a predicted snowstorm is forcing me to leave a day earlier than originally planned, which is making everything tighter.

Last year I walked around in my big, heavy boots. This year I’m being smart about it and going with the black leather moccasins that slip on and off effortlessly.

I’ll have a supply of Starbucks Via packets in case I can’t find my preferred coffee in the airport.

I’ll have my Kindle, which is lighter than the books I tend to pack. I’m leaving the extra rings and bracelets behind. I figure the less I take with me, the less there is to worry about.

Which brings me to the pills. One year I forgot to grab my Prozac bottle on the way out of the hotel and only realized my mistake after getting through the airport TSA line. Now I just pack the exact number of pills I need for the trip. The rest of the bottle stays home.

Now I’ll have the rest of the day to enjoy time with my family.

Repetitive OCD behavior is a time thief. You lose so much because of it.

I’m not totally free of it, but I’m fighting back.

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But I Made All These End-of-the-World Plans

Here I sit at 6 a.m. on December 21. We’re all still here as I expected we would be, despite all the end-of-Mayan-calendar, end-of-the-world talk we’ve been listening to for what seems like an eternity. I’m actually a little disappointed, because there were a few things I was looking forward to, such as:

Mood music:

[spotify:track:3lP4QgKArqyUAMDFPv3zFk]

  • Avoiding the age-old problem of two kids who refuse to get out of bed on time during the school week but who come running downstairs at 5:15 a.m. on their first day of Christmas vacation, hounding me to let them use their electronics.
  • Not having to see any more of those stupid zombie apocalypse memes that flood my Facebook feed.
  • Enjoying a few glasses of wine in the afterworld. Now I have to keep staying sober.
  • Not having to fold laundry or buy groceries.
  • Not having to wrap Christmas gifts.
  • Gaining the ability to levitate.
  • Getting out of jury duty.
  • Not having to get up and dressed.
  • Getting to meet Jim Morrison, Dimebag Darrell and John Belushi.

Truthfully, though, I’m happy to have some extra time to get life right. I’m not there yet.

Carry on.

Maybe-the-Maya-Love-Dilbert