Words of advice for young people

Last February found me back east for a meeting of the trustees of WPRB, my old college radio station. I had been in communication with the events chair of dear old Terrace F. Club, and was invited to give an installment of their series of Talks with Interesting People Accompanied by Drinks.

Princeton in particular but Ivies in general encourage certain temperaments and behaviors: the theoretical over the practical, the critical over the active, the verbal over the physical. Furthermore, the sort of person who gets in tends to have gotten there by staying on the rails: do what you're told, delay gratification, seek affirmation from success within hierarchical systems. Looking ahead to my five-year college reunion this May, I figured I'd finally write up my reflections.

It's been part of my self-work over the past five years to jump those rails. I didn't know what I was really doing at the beginning, but over time I've pulled together scraps and pieces from various different sources of inspiration, into something that begins to approach an "approach." 

Vintage repost: "The Saurian in Winter"

Digging through my old Facebook notes, I found this. I still enjoy its "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" style opening, and the world it evokes in only a few hundred words. I'm thinking about expanding it into a Twine game. Enjoy.

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Autumn comes early on the moon. The automated climate controls, carefully engineered to match the swelter of the late Cretaceous, were nonetheless skewed by the minute fluctuations of orbit that took the moon about an inch further from earth per year. I was welcomed by a robotic servant and taken into the impressive bubbledome parlor, lovingly adorned with retro-futurist décor that screamed 1965. Fitting for the retired supervillain once declared “mightier than all the nations.”


Tyrannus Rex might be considered best as two separate identities (not including the heroic alter-ego from an alternate universe that Rex battled during the Stockholm Incident of 1968); There is the hyperintelligent dinosaur with opposable talons I took tea with in the parlor, and then there is the larger-than-life public figure, the idea of Tyrannus Rex, that stomped on the terra (both figuratively, literally) and commanded the world stage for most of my life. As always, my interlocutor was possessed of the impeccable grace and elocution that comes from kidnapping the great orators of history from various timelines and forcing them to teach you rhetoric, the silvery forked tongue that put presidents and diplomats to shame during his career. 


“But of course, young mammal,” he explained, “Force can lay the world in your jaws, but only eloquence can bid it lie still and accept the inevitable. This fact would have been made crystal clear in 1976 were it not for the intercession of Cimon and the rest of the Cross-Time Athenians. They were glorious in those days, even I their sworn enemy had to admit.” [editor’s note: the Cross-Time Athenians come from a divergent timestream in which an observer from the future was found out in 445 B.C. and forced to yield up his time-traveling equipment to Pericles and the Assembly.] 


Ultimately, however, the former “Lizard-King of Cincinnati” remains phlegmatic about his infamies. The scars that cover his weathered, scaly exterior mark a time long past, before reality television and celebrity culture. Beyond that, the private sector has proven simply more lucrative. By his estimation, Tyrannus Rex now makes more from consulting fees (his unique knowledge of villain psychology has put more than a few of his former colleagues in the League of Nation-Smashers behind bars, or in the case of Amorpho, laser security grids) and corporate speaking engagements (his usual topic is “the will to greatness”) than he ever did as a megalomaniacal threat to global security. 

“It’s the old law, as true in Cicero’s time as ours,” he says with the same sense of resignation I heard during my interview with [Ex-Soviet supergroup] the Red Guards: “Cash rules everything around me…”

Secret Twitter Film Club

Secret twitter film club (STFC) is a game of shared stimulus and strategic ambiguity.

It is inspired by Secret Book Club, a club wherein friends all read the same book at the same time, but are forbidden from discussing it directly. Ideally, one would more easily see how one’s reading bled into their conversation and writing, without direct commentary.

It is a project in the spirit of @Timescanner’s invocation, “Hey everyone, let’s have experiences together,” and a rumination on the cryptic transparency of digital youth, progentitors of the subtweet. Other influences include the great tradition of jokes under communism, campus games of "Assassin," and the secret handshakes of Freemasonry.

Most importantly, Secret Twitter Film Club is secret.

RULES

• You are not to publicly reveal that you are taking part in Secret Twitter Film Club, nor when it is occurring. (STFC CAN HAPPEN AT ANY MOMENT. BE ON THE WATCH.)

• You will be sent a message with the name of the film, the time it is to occur, and the other participants. Times will be selected with a bias to North America. (If this seems impossible for you, feel free to start your own game of Secret Twitter Film Club).

• Perhaps obviously, you cannot give the name of the film you are watching, nor its particularly iconic lines/characters. Try and focus on elements and pieces that are of general interest, but have hidden meanings for fellow watchers.

• You cannot publicly reveal who *else* is in on Secret Twitter Film Club. (If you make a list of other players, for god’s sake keep it secret.) Winks, nods, and coded phrasetalk are perfectly okay presuming you do not blow each others’ covers with your sudden thick-as-thieves-ness.

• If one of your followers figures out that you’re playing Secret Twitter Film Club, you are “wounded” and must continue by appending the hashtag #SecTFC to your (hopefully cryptic) tweets. At this stage, the secret is what film it is.

• If one of your followers figures out what film you’re watching, the jig is up, at least for you and the other wounded. You may continue watching the film, though, and feel free to comment using the hashtag #OvTFC (for “overt twitter film club”)

If you want to play Secret Twitter Film Club, send an email to instigation [at] SplendidVagabond {dot} info that includes your twitter handle, interest in the game, and film preferences.

BONUS PARANOID VARIANT: If I get a sufficiently large body of players, I will split them into teams watching different, but thematically linked films. You will only know the players on your team. Extra points will be given to those who root out other teams' players.

Mark Twain's Focus Group

You think that copy-testing and market research started in the 1930s and 40s with the popularization of survey research after Gallup and Roper's triumph in predicting the 1934 election.

YOU'D LIKE TO THINK THAT.

Actually, like all other aspects of modern American life, from long-distance relationships to fantasy stock-picking, it was actually envisioned by Mark Twain:

"Whenever I am about to publish a book, I feel an impatient desire to know what kind of a book it is. Of course I can find this out only by waiting until the critics shall have printed their reviews. I do know, beforehand, what the verdict of the general public will be, because I have a sure and simple method of ascertaining that. Which is this—if you care to know. I always read the manuscript to a private group of friends, composed as follows:
1. Man and woman with no sense of humor.
2. Man and woman with medium sense of humor.
3. Man and woman with prodigious sense of humor.
4. An intensely practical person.
5. A sentimental person.
6. Person who must have a moral in, and a purpose.
7. Hypercritical person—natural flaw-picker and fault-finder.
8. Enthusiast—person who enjoys anything and everything, almost.
9. Person who watches the others, and applauds or condemns with the majority.
10. Half a dozen bright young girls and boys, unclassified.
11. Person who relishes slang and familiar flippancy.
12. Person who detests them.
13. Person of evenly-balanced judicial mind.
14. Man who always goes to sleep.

These people accurately represent the general public. Their verdict is the sure forecast of the verdict of the general public. There is not a person among them whose opinion is not valuable to me; but the man whom I most depend upon—the man whom I watch with the deepest solicitude—the man who does most toward deciding me as to whether I shall publish the book or burn it, is the man who always goes to sleep. If he drops off within fifteen minutes, I burn the book; if he keeps awake three-quarters of an hour, I publish—and I publish with the greatest confidence, too. For the intent of my works is to entertain; and by making this man comfortable on a sofa and timing him, I can tell within a shade or two what degree of success I am going to achieve. His verdict has burned several books for me—five, to be accurate."

For more information, check out Who is Mark Twain?