Goats with GAD

It’s certainly funny, but it looks like Fainting Goats are genetically prone to panic attacks. (Apparently no one in the veterinary psychopharmacology industry has tapped into the Klonopin for Kids market. Shame.) I sympathize with the goats. Replace that threatening umbrella with the word deadline, and you’ve got me:

Lend me some sugar, I am your neighbor!

I can’t wait to see the Young@Heart chorus documentary. If it’s anything like their performance on Ellen, they’re fabulous. (The line that kills me: “Lend me some sugar, I am your neighbor!”)

Lend me some sugar, I am your neighbor!

I can’t wait to see the Young@Heart chorus documentary. If it’s anything like their performance on Ellen, they’re fabulous. (The line that kills me: “Lend me some sugar, I am your neighbor!”)

The Logical Fallacy Project

Events past and quite recent have gotten me thinking about logic. I’m not talking about funky symbols and math proof kind of logic. I’m talking about logic and argumentation that people use when they talk and write. And what I’ve been thinking about it is this: people have forgotten how to use logic, misuse logic, or choose not to use logic at all. We are in an age that relies so heavily on written communication. At the same time, we are in an age of informal text messaging, instant messaging, and college students who don’t know how to write an appropriate email to a professor, let alone pay attention in Freshman composition. People are forgetting how to use their words to effectively win friends and influence people.

The spoken word is no less vulnerable to bad logic. As our friends at The Daily Show and The Colbert Report like to point out, our politicians and public figures put their foot in their mouths all the time. And much to our amusement, the more newsreel archives they have to work with, the tastier the foot seems to be. Put reading and writing faux pas together, and I come to the following conclusion: assuming that we are a rational and educated bunch of homo sapiens is becoming more and more of a fallacy.

Speaking of which, let’s talk about logical fallacies. I think a misconception about logic is that you need to be a brain child to understand it. I disagree. To pursue logic and learn about logical fallacies, you don’t need a philosophy class, math class, or even a college degree. Ivory Tower not required. It’s OK if you didn’t take Latin or do debate in high school. I sure as hell didn’t. As far as I’m concerned, all you need is YouTube.

There are examples of bad logic all over the place. We can shake our head at them, get pissed off about them, ignore them, or even laugh about them. Perhaps more productively, though, if we document cases of bad logic in our day to day lives, we can learn from them.

To this end, I would like to start The Logical Fallacy Project. Here’s how it works:

1. Find a logical fallacy you would like to give a visual representation to
2. Give the definition of the fallacy (with some link to an internet reference)
3. Give video title and video (or give link to video)
4. Give brief description/background of the video and why it demonstrates (or does not demonstrate) this fallacy.
5. Any other comments you want to make after the person has watched the video.
6. Tell your friends and hope it catches on.

So here are the two I would like to start with:

The Fallacies:

Argumentum ad misericordiam: This is the Appeal to Pity, also known as Special Pleading. The fallacy is committed when someone appeals to pity for the sake of getting a conclusion accepted.

Argumentum ad nauseam: This is the incorrect belief that an assertion is more likely to be true, or is more likely to be accepted as true, the more often it is heard. So an Argumentum ad Nauseam is one that employs constant repetition in asserting something; saying the same thing over and over again until you’re sick of hearing it.

Video Title:

“We Both Reached for the Gun” aka “The Press Conference Rag” from the movie version of the musical Chicago (lyrics can be found here).

For those not familiar with the “Roxie Hart defense”, here is the background:

Girl is cheating on husband. Her lover tells her their affair is over, and in a fit of rage, she shoots him in the back and kills him. She is thrown in jail. Fact: Roxie shot him on purpose and they did not both reach for the gun. Defense lawyer gives a fabricated–yet plausible–story of the murder, and through arguments ad misericordiam and ad nauseam tries to persuade the press that girl is innocent.

Video:

Commentary:

Misericordiam: Let’s feel bad for poor Roxie. Commiserate with her:

• Her parents are dead
• She was orphaned
• She was rescued by the Nuns of the Sacred Heart
• That pushy Amos forced her to get married
• She knew she was doing wrong by meeting with her ex
• Poor her, her burly pistol-toting “ex-boyfriend” came at her with a gun
• She’s a girl, and therefore defenseless against such an attack
• She’s frightened in jail
• She went crazy from jazz and liquor
• She was taken advantage of by men who are out chasing tail.
• But she would give her right eye to undo her “mistake”

There’s no way she could have done something so heinous on purpose, right?

“are you kidding?”

When Miss Sunshine is not swayed by the misericordiam arguments, she starts asking questions about the murder. When the questions get a little too detailed for comfort, Billy goes for the ad nauseam:

They both reached for the gun…they both reached for the gun…you are getting sleepy…

The puppet-master motif in this scene is especially powerful in showing what an ad nauseam argument can do. If you can get people to stop asking questions and hypnotize them to believe your story by repetition, you can spin your story to front page news. As this video shows, with ad nauseam, not only can you get away with avoiding the real issues, you can get away with…

Well, murder.

The wrong week to quit.

Grad students: As another semester and year of graduate school comes to a close, a sudden change in personal habits is not advisable:

Thanks for Hating On Me

I wrote this song for everybody who is mad at somebody about their blessings.
Mostly for family, you know, cause that…that thing does happen.
So cousin so-and-so whoever you are out there: Heh heh.

–Jill Scott, on VH1 Soul

Yes, Jill, that thing does happen. And in my case, mostly with family (but not my cousins). Thank you for writing this song. In addition to helping me in my never-ending quest to find examples of the malefactive construction in English (i.e., things that happen on somebody), your song has been my mantra of the week (translation: see #6 of this post):

Hate On Me
From Jill Scott’s The Real Thing – Words and Sounds, Vol. 3

If I could give you the world
On a silver platter
Would it even matter?
You’d still be mad at me

If I could find in all this
A dozen roses
Which I would give to you
You’d still be miserable

In reality
I’m gonna be who I be
and I don’t feel no fault
For all the lies that you bought

You can try as you may
Break me down but I say
That it ain’t up to you
Gonna do what you do

Hate on me hater
Now or later
‘Cause I’m gonna do me
You’ll be mad baby
Go ‘head and hate on me hater
I’m not afrai-id
What I got I paid for
You can hate on me

Ooh if I gave you peaches
Out of my own garden
And I made you a peach pie
Would you slap me?

I wonder if I gave you diamonds
Out of my own womb
Would you feel the love in that?
Or ask, “why not the moon?”

If I gave you sanity
For the whole of humanity
Had all the solutions
To the pain and pollution?

No matter where I live
Despite the things I give
You’ll always be this way
So go ‘head and

Hate on me hater
Now or later
‘Cause I’m gonna do me
You’ll be mad baby
Go ‘head and hate on me hater
I’m not afrai-id
What I got I paid for
You can hate on me (x2)

You cannot hate on me ’cause my mind is free, feel my destiny

..So shall it be

Maybe he’d have gotten a PhD in Linguistics. Linguistics!

The thought of Bush and Chomsky in the same room together is frightening. Good thing we didn’t stay in Vietnam…

Parlez-vous le français?

Si non, laissez Le Vol des Conchords vous enseigner. Il faut dire simplement: Foux Da Fa Fa.

(if you don’t see a blue screen, push the play button to get video)

It’s all the meme to me

Holy crap, I’ve been tagged twice to do a “weird things about me” meme.

You kids with your fancy new words and terminology. I had to look up what a meme was before I could even start to contribute to one. And I guess I also needed to learn what that “incoming links” list on my WordPress dashboard was all about, cause Alejna tagged me to do this back in April. Well good thing this is all working itself out. This is helping me grow (and procrastinate). I had to figure out how to embed videos for this post! These are all steps in the technovanced direction!

There are definitely enough weird things about me to make for interesting stories. And I relish telling a good story. I hinted at some of my quirks a while back, when I posted Things to Ask Me at a Cocktail Party and More things to Ask Me at a Cocktail Party. Oprah wouldn’t even have to confront me about embellishing some of those doozies, cause even in telling the plain truth they’re outrageous. When Alejna tagged me to do the meme, I was to do a list of 6 weird things about me. When Alex tagged me, I think the ante was upped to 8. Eight is a good even number. There couldn’t possibly many more than 8 weird things about me…

So Alejna, Alex, world at large, here you go. Without further ado, here are 8 random things about me:

1. My grandfather invented the cardboard milk carton. The one that looks like this (00:16):

I always wondered why my grandpa had a golden milk carton statue sitting on the shelf. It said “To Jim Crawford, With Thanks” on the bottom of it.

So yeah. Before grandpa and the now ubiquitous carton, it was the milkman and bottles. And bags. It revolutionized the dairy industry, and allowed fresh milk to exist where it didn’t before. My grandfather was sent to Iran in the late 70s to work with dairy companies. He helped set up the machines which pasteurized milk and packaged it in that spiffy flip top box.

But not everyone has benefitted from this wonderful invention. For example, Bob Barker the dachshund has had many difficulties with grandpa’s invention (00:27):

And as a linguist, I also feel the need to add this tidbit. In addition to revolutionizing the dairy industry, the invention of the milk carton led to the creation of a new word: lactomangulation.

(lak’tō-man’gū-lay’shən)

1. (n.) Manhandling the “open here” spout on a milk container so badly that one has to resort to the “illegal” side.

This fine word is a sniglet. Sniglets, of course, were made famous by HBO’s old comedy show Not Necessarily the News.

Murali here can help you prevent lactomangulation (00:21):

Grandpa also had a plaque with the definition of lactomangulation on the wall, not far from the golden milk carton statue on the shelf. The connection was still not obvious to me until late into my teens.

Unfortunately, I am not the heiress to the dairy fortune; like most engineer employees, grandpa had to sell his patent to the company he worked for. In 1975, he received a big fat royalty check for the whopping sum of $75. The consolation prize is that I do have a nicely bound volume of his patents, which I think is really cool.

2. I listen to house music when I write papers. At least I did when I was writing my MA thesis. In one way, it made me feel like less of a dork. I may have been tapping away at a research paper, but I was clubbing at the same time. Play this video last (it’s about 10:00), and see if you can get work done with this as your background:

I find now that I can’t do the house music/writing thing anymore. Too distracting. I do most of my writing at the 1369 Coffeehouse, whose music selection is usually fantastic, and overlaps a lot with mine (even some of the African stuff. I love those guys).

3. I don’t like to buy the magazine/shirt/can of beans that is in the front of the stack. I don’t have a video for this one. It’s just a weird thing about me. I don’t do it all the time, and the habit is not to the point of OCD. Just weird.

4. I am an award-winning golfer. No shit. Back when Dad belonged to the Detroit Golf Club, I spent my Saturdays in the youth league. At the beginning, I could shoot a 69–for one hole. The youngins started out small, and certainly didn’t play 18 holes. But I did my lessons every week (head down, arms straight, hips stable, follow through) and by the end of that year, I was down to about a 12 for the par 4 on #1 South. And at the end of that summer, I got a trophy for being the most improved one-holer.

And though I never won an award for it, I once hit a 125 yard shot straight into the hole. Straight in. The ball didn’t bounce, the pin didn’t even shake. Although it wasn’t a hole-in-one, and my dad was the only witness, it felt like this (1:17):

I declared lifelong bragging rights after that, then retirement. I mean, you have to let Tiger Woods be the best at something.

5. I once had to leave a church crying because the thought of infinity scared me so badly. To quote Outkast, “Forever, forever, ever, forever, ever?” Where did it come from, where did it go? When did it end? I don’t know exactly what it was. The image in my head associated with these thoughts looked something like this, on repeat, and I freaked out (00:20):

6. I like to listen to particular songs on loop for hours at a time. I know, sounds paradoxical, given #5. It started with Spring Break my senior year and a cassette tape single of Ace of Base’s The Sign. Long story. But listening to things ad infinitum didn’t really get old after that.

The song that’s on loop for me this week? I can’t stop hitting play (3:09):

7. I used to choreograph and stage musical events for my family. For the hell of it. Sometimes with friends, and sometimes with my cousins when they were around. We invented storylines. We had rehearsals. We memorized lines. We choreographed, and we danced. One was based around this song. And when we were ready, we gathered the family in one room, and we performed. Yes, I was the ringleader, but I don’t think any of my cousins and friends can honestly say they unwillingly participated in it.

And the biggest chef d’oeuvre of my teenage directing/producing career? It was created for my mother’s 2nd wedding. Using a very special song by one of my favorite artists at the time. Minus the accordion, it looked a lot like this (5:00):

Except with microphones. With more performers. With a large audience. At a wedding reception. I can hear the cries of shame coming from my cousins as this video plays.

8. I have an uncanny ability to spot sampled loops in songs, and can usually identify their original source. And it makes me happy when I hear one. I’ve thought many times that this ability would make me an outstanding entertainment lawyer. But we already have one of those in the family. We all know Puff Daddy sampled The Police in his tribute to The Notorious B.I.G., that was an easy one (4:04):

Of the multitude of samples I’ve heard and delighted in, the one that has excited me the most was the use of a loop from a song on The Monkees album Headquarters. Yes, wacky fact 8 1/2 about me: I had a brief obsession with the Monkees in the late 80s when they made their comeback on MTV. The song is called Zilch:

Sample of Zilch (iTunes) (Amazon–scroll down page for sample)

The main loop in this song turned into a catchy little tune created by Del Tha Funkee Homosapien called Mistadobalina (3:58):

This, of course, is on Del’s album I Wish My Brother George Was Here.

Zilch also spawned this one, posted on YouTube earlier this month, which just kind of freaks me out (8:41):

Del, wherever you’re at, I know you or someone you know is listening to The Monkees, and that makes me happy. Well done.

OK. That’s it. I’m tired. That’s all the fun trivia you’re going to get out of me today. I don’t even know who to tag to continue this meme, because I don’t read that many blogs. Instead, I might start a meme of my own, and see who follows.

I don’t know, I’ve already had 6 cups…

One of my favorite Kids in the Hall sketches:

The day Cathy snapped because she was given De-Caf.