Way Too Funny

The Junk Drawer: The “What were you THINKING?” edition

Compared to the rest of my life, this is actually pretty well organized…

Welcome to this edition of the junk drawer. As we have outlined in previous junk drawer posts, this is a random collection of stuff that is important but didn’t fit anywhere else, much like that drawer in the kitchen of most of our homes.

We start this week, as most Catholics do, with a confession…

For the first time in the history of the blog, I killed a post after I published it when a reader wrote in to complain. Tuesday, I was a bit out of my lane when I wrote a post titled “Vote or Whatever,” that tried to do something for Election Day. The post wasn’t coming together the way I wanted, but I figured I’d force things a bit and see what happened.

The point I was trying to make was that people have rights in this country, regardless of if they vote or not. For example, the line about “If you don’t vote, you don’t have the right to complain,” is completely untrue. The First Amendment gives you the right to grouse up a storm if you want, regardless of if you cast a ballot and pick up an “I Voted” sticker. However, if people don’t vote, the folks that do might elect people who decide to take back a few of the rights you like.

The reader made the point that it sounded like I was telling people not to vote and that voting didn’t matter. After a few exchanges, I went back and reread the post, which I already knew I was forcing to begin with, and realized the reader was right. I tried fixing it a couple times before I remembered “Filak’s First Rule of Holes,” so I killed it.

Just like I tell myself when I’m working on a car, a pinball machine, a piece of furniture or an appliance around the house: Don’t force it or you’ll turn a bad situation into a worse one. This was one of those cases, so I apologize to whoever read that thing before it mercifully was relegated to the dustbin of history.

Speaking of bad ideas that were poorly executed…

WTF, KFC?

Not every promotional effort on social media is perfect, but when you’re trying to get people to enjoy a sandwich by commemorating a Nazi atrocity, you’re definitely going to catch some blow back:

KFC’s German branch has apologized for seeming to encourage its customers to mark the anniversary of Kristallnacht — the notorious Nazi pogrom against Jews — by eating chicken, saying that a promotional message was sent in error as a result of an automated push notification.

The pogrom that began on Nov. 9, 1938, is known as the night of broken glass, and is widely commemorated as the start of the Holocaust. It was a coordinated assault on German Jews and their homes, businesses and synagogues.

On Wednesday, KFC Germany sent a message to users of its app with the title “Anniversary of the Reich’s pogrom night,” according to reports in the German news media and screen shots of the promotion that circulated widely on Twitter. The message invited customers to enjoy “tender cheese with crispy chicken.”

KFC Germany “quickly followed up with an apology” and then noted it was the work of an automated program that paired promotional tweets with historical events commemorated on a calendar. If true, they might want to look ahead to April 30 to prevent a “stock the bunker in case of guests” 2-for-1 bucket promotion.

Let’s move on…

From the “Does that period key work?” department:

The general vibe in most media writing is that short and tight sentences are better than the alternative.  Leads are generally about 25-35 words, particularly if they’re straight news pieces. Then there’s this one:

WASHINGTON – A West Bend man who police say entered a city polling place last Tuesday with a knife and demanded staff “stop the voting” had been arrested just days prior and was free on a signature bond for reportedly posting hand-written racist and threatening political messages downtown and sending photos of those notes to Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson and Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes.

At 65 words, you’re almost more than double what you would normally expect for something that basically says, “Dude making threats made threats before.”

It could have been worse, as this writer demonstrated with another monstrosity of writing. The only person whose getting away with a sentence this long is Bret Easton Ellis if he’s writing from the perspective of a coked up hedge-fund manager:

Johnson, coming off a victory that secured him his third term in the Senate, joined a chorus of Senate GOP colleagues last week in pushing to delay the chamber’s Republican leadership elections set for Wednesday until the conference can have “serious discussions” about what the party can do to improve its chances of winning the presidency and both chambers of Congress in 2024, according to a letter the senators sent to colleagues.

As is the case with all writers, the Journal-Sentinel invites us to follow this guy on Twitter. I might actually do that, just to see what happens when he’s hemmed in at 280 character, or roughly 60% of that sentence.

Speaking of Twitter….

Is it midnight or is that just the NYT throwing shade?

I always loved sentences in news stories that basically wrote themselves. If I didn’t have to try to hype a story because the facts alone  made people say, “Damn….,” I was a happy camper.

I would have basically given anything to have written this sentence in a story about Elon Musk booking Twitter for a one-way ticket on the Titanic:

That was such a sick burn there isn’t enough water in the world to put it out.

Speaking of dry spells…

From the “homophonic bias” department:

I found this one back when Aaron Judge was chasing Roger Maris’ home run record in the American League. Apparently Judge had a bit of a dry spell when it came to dingers, or he stopped for a frosty beer along the way to the park…

In case you are unclear, a drought is a lack of rain, or whatever else is supposed to be showing up (in this case, home runs). A draught is an English spelling of anything drawn from a keg. To be fair, Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle tended to tip a few before launching balls into the stratosphere, so maybe Judge was trying to stick with tradition…

Speaking of baseball…

I got this promotion for some reason in my social media feed and even after reading it three times, I still found myself laughing like a 12-year-old boy.

For the Fanatics promotional staff, I’d like to offer this post that covers about a dozen or more terms you probably want to avoid…

Have a good rest of the week.

Vince

(a.k.a. The Doctor of Paper)

A brief reminder that parody is protected speech and should stay that way

People sometimes need to be reminded that parody is protected speech. The thin-skinned police department in Parma, Ohio, arrested Anthony Novak for building a fake Facebook page meant to mock the agency’s efforts to combat crime. Novak spent four days in jail because of the page he created in 2016.

His criminal trial ended in a non-guilty verdict, as the jury found he did not use his computer to disrupt police functions. However, Novak planned a civil suit, arguing that his civil rights were violated, but lower courts dismissed his claims.

Now he’s going before the Supreme Court with some support from “America’s Finest News Source:”

One of Mr. Novak’s lawyers, Patrick Jaicomo, said in an interview Monday that last month he contacted Jordan LaFlure, the managing editor of The Onion, which is based in Chicago, to make him aware of the case and see if he would be interested in helping raise attention.

“They heard the story, and they were like, ‘Oh my god, this is something that could really put all of our people in the crosshairs if we rub someone the wrong way with one of our stories,’” Mr. Jaicomo said.

In a filing that read in places like one of its articles, The Onion laid out why it believes the authorities in Ohio had acted unconstitutionally, sprinkling in sincere arguments in defense of parody while riddling the rest of the text with moments of jest and hubris — claiming, for example, a readership of 4.3 trillion, and also boasting that it “owns and operates the majority of the world’s transoceanic shipping lanes.”

I’m having a hard time imagining the 5-4 stick-up-the-keester majority being persuaded by this brief, although I guess I could envision Justice Brett Kavanaugh paging through this while drinking a beer and taking a dump. (Sorry to my more “visual” readers…)

I’ve been surprised by court rulings before, including the Mahanoy v. B.L. 8-1 decision, however, the Court recently seems generally grumpy toward free expression these days. In ruling against the MyPillow Guy,  Gorsuch and Thomas grumbled again that the court should reconsider Times v. Sullivan, a case that makes it really hard for public figures to win libel suits. Also, I’m more than a little concerned that we’ve got about seven self-professed Christians on the bench, given that the key lawsuit protecting parody involves a porno mag and a joke about the Rev. Jerry Falwell banging his mother behind an outhouse.

(Of course, there’s also the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision. I’m not getting into the weeds on that, but let’s just say the Court seems to be relying on this precedent in dealing with the whole concept of “stare decisis.”)

I have yet to meet anyone who enjoys being mocked, but most folks know to take it in stride and get over it. I have met plenty of people who enjoy mockery as a form of humor, which is why insult comics get some of the biggest laughs and any man over the age of 40 can probably tell you which copy of Mad Magazine was the first one they ever purchased. (June 1987, Star Trek IV cover for me…)

At the college level, as much as I broke out in hives every time a student said, “Hey, let’s do an April Fool’s Edition!” I would prefer them to operate under the blanket of protection afforded them by the decision in the Flynt case. (One year, the student newspaper here Photoshopped the chancellor’s head onto the famous Demi Moore Vanity Fair image. Something tells me that didn’t go over too well…) Of all the thin-skinned, hair-trigger-offended, self-important people I’ve met in my life, far too many of them reside in academia, so having no protection for parody would put the kids directly in the soup far too often.

One of the best explanations of why speech that people don’t like came through in yet another clip that focuses on the apparent patron saint of this blog:

If George Washington can handle the donkey cartoon, Reagan didn’t jail Trudeau and the highest court in the land could see value in mocking Jerry Falwell, the police in Parma, Ohio could have just let Anthony Novak be. The fact they didn’t should earn them some form of punishment.

And maybe a little more protected mockery…

 

An Unprecedented List of Radical, Breaking News Items that Need to have their Ticket Punched to the Ash Heap of History

Every so often, we hit up the Hivemind here for words that are getting used way too frequently for no really good reason. Without further ado, here is the list that emerged from our most recent visit to cliche town:

Unprecedented: Between the pandemic, the Trump lawsuits and the trend of cooking chicken with Nyquil, we are the point where the bar for something receiving the “unprecedented” label is pretty high. At this point, it better be Jesus riding a unicorn while throwing tacos to his followers.

(And thanks to the AI artists program, we actually can check this one off our bucket list of “unprecedented” things.)

You’re welcome. Now, go find something else to use in place of this word…

Miracle (sports): I’m sure it was a great game or an incredible comeback, but unless the seas parted between third and home or loaves and fishes multiplied in the end zone, we can stop with this.

Radical (political ads): Did the candidate threaten to castrate guys with tin snips in the parking lot of an Aldi’s as part of their plan to limit the needs for abortions? THAT’S radical. The rest is just stuff you don’t like.

Squash (legal term): It is not. You quash a subpoena. You squash a bug. Or you plant a squash.

Agenda (political ads): I’ve yet to run into a politician who has a fully formed set of motives and efforts that they’ve outlined and subsequently enacted, which is the literal definition of an agenda. In most cases, it feels like this:

Punched their ticket to: Nobody punches tickets anymore. I can’t even get a paper ticket so I can keep the stub as a souvenir. I think if the bands you’re seeing are old enough to qualify for Social Security, the fans should be allowed to request paper tickets. And those will still remain unpunched.

Phone ring off the hook: Phones no longer have hooks. They rarely ring. I get that “Phone buzzing off the desk” doesn’t have the same feel, but maybe just take the next train out of Clicheville… I bet they’ll punch your ticket on the way out.

Weaponize (politics): If you accuse people of “weaponizing” race or gender, they’d better be able to launch a missile out of something. Same thing with anything else we “weaponize.”

Officer-involved shooting: Tell me the cop shot someone or that someone shot the cop. Active, not passive.

Breaking news: It’s not breaking just because you finally figured out about it. Also, it’s not breaking news just because you want to tell me something now. “Breaking news: I just started writing this blog post… More at 11…”

Parlay: By definition, it is, “a cumulative series of bets in which winnings accruing from each transaction are used as a stake for a further bet.” You did not “parlay initial success” of anything into anything else. Unless you could lose that success, stop it.

Brandish: It requires a waving with a flourish, usually in anger. The robber with the gun in his pocket didn’t brandish anything. Unless he broke out into show tunes with a dance number…

Parents’ worst nightmare: Really? We sure on that? I just finished watching the Netflix series on Jeffrey Dahmer, and I lived in Milwaukee during that whole time period, so I’ve got a pretty high “nightmare” threshold. I’m sure whatever happened sucked, but if you spent any time in my nightmares, you’d probably not be talking about a kid not answering a cell phone on time in that regard…

Iconic: A friend notes this article on Ben Affleck and a nap as the moment “iconic” jumped the shark. (Another phrase we should stop using, probably, unless this happens again…)

Unique: It means one of a kind. Unless it’s a snowflake or the Hope Diamond, find a different descriptor.

Ash Heap of History: Unless we really are burning the books, stop using this to describe things we stopped using.

Worth noting: Translation- “I don’t have this from a source, but I want to tell you something.”

Terrible tragedy: As opposed to what? Those fantastic tragedies that make us all happy to be here?

Incident (cop speak): “Police responded to an incident in which…” We know it’s an incident. Everything is an incident. Me typing right now is an incident…

 

THROWBACK THURSDAY: The five conversations journalism professors have in hell.

A colleague posted a venting missive about a student’s grade-grubbing attempt at extra credit that caught my eye:

No I won’t negotiate your grade. No you can’t have “extra credit” considering you failed to do all of the 15 extra credit assignments during the semester. No, you’re not “ridiculously close” to an A with an 88.11%.
I promise you a news director when you graduate will not Grade your stories on a curve either you did it or you didn’t.
Also, I still don’t have obituaries from the two students who had grandmothers die and they couldn’t take the final, which was open for 50 hours.
The missive clearly hit a nerve, as many of us decided to chime in with our own, “OK, I can top that…” versions of student chutzpah.
In honor of the end of the semester and the myriad insane things professors are dealing with, I decided to bring back this classic that covers a lot of weirdness with some mirth and a few tips.
Enjoy.

The five conversations journalism professors have in hell.

Growing up as a Catholic kid, who spent way more time near nuns than is now recommended by the FDA, I found the concept of hell horrifying. Conceptually speaking, it was a place of fire, brimstone and evil where you went after you had sinned without repenting, angered God through evil acts or accidentally ate a Slim Jim on a Friday during Lent.

Later in life, I asked a priest who was a little more “new school” about the faith for his views on eternal damnation. He told me it was probably more of never-ending sorrow and sadness than the torture outlined by those who grew up before the Vatican II era. It was a a longing and pain for better things and regret over what we should have been. In other words, hell is more individualized and accounts for what we did and who we were.

If hell hits somewhere in that “sweet spot” between those points, I’m sure I know exactly what I’ll be getting myself into if I’m not a decent human being. Since I’ve invested most of my life in teaching and journalism, I know that hell will involve reliving certain conversations I’ve had with students over the past 20 years that continue to sap my will to go on.

So without further ado, I bring you the five conversations journalism professors have in hell and how you can help us avoid them while we’re still alive:

 

CONVERSATION 1: SO WE NEEDED THE BOOK?

Look, I get it. Textbooks are expensive. In fact, the entire premise of this blog is that textbooks cost too much, change too often and usually have the lifespan of a mayfly. That said, we assign them for a reason: They actually contain stuff you’ll need to know. This is particularly true for books like the AP style guide. Here was an actual conversation I had with a student half way through the semester:

Student: How much are these books?
Me: What do you mean?
Student: This AP book, how much does it cost?
Me: About $20-25. Why?
Student: It must not have been listed on the criteria for the class. I think I’ll go buy it though.

OK, let’s pretend that I hadn’t mentioned it about 10,002 times already and that I didn’t include it as a required book in the syllabus and that I didn’t mention this as a MUST HAVE for the class (as in, “If you are broke, don’t buy the textbook, but buy the AP book.) AND that it wasn’t stocked at the book store.

Every other student in that class had the book. What, they were clairvoyant and just figured I wanted them to have it?

Making things weirder, a student in the very next section of that class, sitting in that very same seat asked the EXACT SAME QUESTION about the AP book, swearing he had no idea that this thing would be important. I think I need to call in some sort of holistic medicine person to burn sage on that chair or something…

Still, this pales in comparison to the year I told the students in WEEK 12 that they should bring their AP style guides to class, only to have one student reach into his backpack and whip his out. “GOT IT!” he said, proudly displaying the book he was supposed to have read by that point in time.

It was still shrink wrapped.

HOW TO PREVENT THIS: Buy the books and read them. If you are REALLY broke (as in, stacking pennies for Ramen broke) and you CAN’T afford them, talk to the professor and see what is absolutely essential and what you might be able to dodge. However, do this somewhere before the midterm.

CONVERSATION 2: I LOOKED EVERYWHERE!

The constant yelling of old people (read: me) about “damned kids these days” come from the fact that we often wonder how hard students really tried before giving up all hope and saying, “Just give me the answer.”

Damned Kids

Case in point, here was a conversation I had about a midterm question in which students were asked to rewrite a lead on one of four stories. Each story included a specific time peg, so I told students to use the day specified in the story (e.g. The game happened Saturday, so use “Saturday” as your “when” element.) when they wrote their lead. About an hour into the test, here was the conversation:

Student: I know you said that there is a time element we need to use with each of these stories, but I honestly can’t find one in this story I’m using.
Me: OK, pull it up and let me see. (he does)
Student: I looked through this whole thing and there’s no time element.
Me: Really?
Him: Yes, I can’t find it anywhere.
Me: Read the first sentence out loud for me.
(Silence)
Him: Oh.

Yep. Right there in the lead was that elusive time element he sought. I suppose I was lucky the student didn’t have trouble finding his pants before showing up in class…

HOW TO PREVENT THIS: Don’t give up so easily on figuring things out. There is something to be said for figuring stuff out on your own. Print it out or magnify the text or whatever you need that will help you consume the content. Also, if you really CAN’T find the content, when you ask, do so in a way that doesn’t immediately insinuate your professor is an idiot who failed to include the content.

Trust me, this is a great fear of many instructors and there are days we can’t remember what we ate for lunch, so screwing up a test is always a possibility. We then panic when you are “so sure” that whatever it is you’re looking for isn’t actually there. Finding out that, no, it actually is present and, no, we don’t have early onset dementia, is both a relief and a moment of “What the hell is wrong with kids these days?”

 

CONVERSATION 3: I KNOW YOU SAID X, BUT…

Rules are put in place to assure fairness, standardize procedures and give everyone guidance on how to proceed with a test, an assignment or a project. If you want to curdle a professor’s soul, explain to him or her that, yes, you understand rules exist for all those reasons, but the rules really only apply to other people.

Student: I know you said we can’t interview relatives for this assignment, but I was wondering if I could interview my mom.
Me: OK, what does your mom have to do with (the story topic)?
Her: Well, she’s a parent of a college student…
Me: But that’s really not what the story is about and even if it was, there are like 14,000 students on this campus, many of whom have parents. Does she have some special insights that none of the others would have had?
Her: Um… I don’t understand what the problem is. Why can’t I just interview my mom?
Me: Again, she has nothing to do with the story and I need you to get out of your comfort zone and interview people that you don’t know. It’s a skill you’re going to need as a reporter.
Her: So that’s a no?
Me: Yes. That’s a no.

HOW TO PREVENT THIS: Start by assuming that the rules, however arcane, have a reason behind them. Envision that “Karate Kid” moment where Daniel realizes that he hasn’t just been an indentured servant, but rather has been learning karate:

Also, realize that we WILL give people special dispensation for certain things, but it has to be germane to what we’re doing and provide a rare glimpse into something no one else could provide. If you’re doing a story on what it’s like to be an NFL referee and your uncle is an NFL referee, we might think, “That would actually work.” However, if you’re doing a story on how bad parking is on campus and you want to interview your best friend because he owns a car, think twice before asking on that one.

Nothing sounds worse to a professor than a student essentially saying, “Look, I know you told me what to do here, but you have to understand that rules don’t really apply to me because I want to do it my way and obviously that’ll be better for me, so can you just rubber stamp my demands? Thanks!”

CONVERSATION 4: HEY, DID I MISS ANYTHING?

Professors have a ton of stuff to do and most of them feel like they’re not doing it well enough to make anyone happy. The ability to focus well enough to deliver a two-hour lecture on something you will need to know to succeed in the class is the Educational Dream of the Millennium.

When you blow it off, fail to take notes or get way too into a SnapChat battle with your roommates during lecture, it can be irritating to us. When you then ask us to “fill you in” on what you “missed,” We tend to have this reaction:

Actual email:

I was just wondering what exactly the group interview project is again and what needs to be turned into you by Friday! I don’t quite remember everything you said at the end of class yesterday so if you could remind me that would be great.

At least that guy showed up, unlike the student who blew off class, skipped an assignment she knew about and then sent this:

Sorry, I was not able to attend class today. What did I miss? When is the interview paper due?

Perhaps my favorite one was years ago when I had a student tell me she spent six hours in the ER with a kidney infection and that she was way too sick to attend my 3 p.m. class. I explained I understood and that these kinds of things happen.

Later that night, my wife and I were at the local journalism bar and guess who walked in? Yep. The student.

She saw me, got a freaked-out look on her face and practically dove into the party room next to the entrance.

The conversation that followed the next class period was epic:

Her: Hi, I was wondering if I missed anything in class…
Me: Well, it’s been said that the appearance of impropriety is worse than impropriety itself, which is what I thought about when I saw you walk into the Heidelberg the other night, four hours after skipping my class.
Her: Oh! I can explain that!
Me: I’d love to hear it.
Her: Well, it was my friend’s birthday and I was feeling much better at that point so I just stopped by for a drink.
Me: With a kidney infection?
Her: Oh, yeah! I have my doctor’s note for you. Let me get that!
Me: (feeling aneurysm building in my brain, fueled by her complete lack of self-awareness) Um… That’s OK… Let’s just start class.

HOW TO PREVENT THIS: Go to class. If you don’t go to class, get notes from somebody before asking us to rebuild a lecture for you. If you went to class and forgot to write something down, ask a classmate. If you are going to class, writing stuff down and still failing to remember major things, seek help immediately.

CONVERSATION 5:

Me: Hello? Anyone out there?
Voice: Welcome to hell. I am Lucifer, the fallen one, evil incarnate, the lord of the underworld. Do you know who you sinned against to land you here?
Me: Do you mean, “Do I know against WHOM I sinned to land here?”
Voice: Oh great. Another journalism professor. Y’all are down the hall, third door on the left.

Potential solutions for grade debates between students and professors

As the end of the semester draws near, grades tend to become a topic of consternation among students and professors. Students tend to worry about the outcome of their course work as it relates to their ability to graduate, move on or keep that ever-important GPA on the up-slope.

Professors, on the other hand, find themselves buried in grading, often wondering why we didn’t just show movies and mark attendance for 15 weeks. As we slog through the work we brought upon ourselves, students are questioning, begging and cajoling, all in desperate hopes of nudging grades just a little (or in some cases, a lot) higher.

I can’t solve every problem (or most of them) on the blog , but here are a few random ideas I have for making life a bit easier on all of us in regard to the grade debate.

Take them as seriously as they seem…

The “Peace with Honor” grade: I’m sure most students have failed to put in an appropriate amount of time on an assignment at some point in time. I’ve noticed this usually happens on essays or longer-form writing pieces, where the student figures if they pour enough BS into a Word document, the professor will decide to give them at least a few points.

The problem is that professors are often stuck when it comes to grading these papers, even with a quality rubric. We don’t know if you were having difficulty with the assignment, so we need to point out the errors in detail to help you for the next one, or if you just didn’t give a crap, so we’re wasting time telling you things you knew, but just didn’t do.

Thus, I propose a “Peace with Honor” grade approach.

When a student knows they are behind the 8-ball on an assignment, instead of BSing us to high heaven and having us wade through your BS, a student can write something simple like, “I know I should have dealt with this assignment better, but I’m not wasting your time trying to fake it.”

The professor, in gratitude, will fail the student with a specific amount of points (I’m a fan of 40-50%), with the idea that not having to comment on every stupid thing the student could have written will save time and defer carpal tunnel surgery.

 

The “I’m Better Than This” cease fire: In journalism, we care what you can do, not what your grades are once you graduate. To that end, many professors will encourage students to participate in student media to sharpen their skills and gain experience.

In more than a few cases, this is like encouraging someone to “just try” some cocaine so they can get a bunch of stuff done quickly. The students quickly become addicted to the newsroom and their GPA heads downhill like a stock market graph of the Great Depression.

Professors often start getting weaker work from those students because they’re running the paper or the radio station or the TV station. Suddenly, classes have become something of an fifth or eighth priority in their lives.

For some professors, this can become irritating because we KNOW you can do better at this work. For some students, this can also become irritating because they KNOW they are better than what the grades they get keep reflecting.

A potential solution is this cease-fire approach: I’ve told more than a few students, “Look, I get it. I once skipped six weeks of classes because I was dedicated to the student newspaper. I know why you’re disappearing like a kid running after a red balloon in a Stephen King novel. I also understand I’m not a top priority, so let’s try to make peace with this.

“I will promise not to ride you mercilessly about how crappy your work is in here, if you promise not to piss and moan about your lousy grades. We’ll get you through this alive, and once you end up running a professional newsroom, just make sure you keep your alma mater in mind for potential internship candidates. And don’t make GPA a requirement for successful applications when you’re running the show.”

 

The “One-Point, Death-Grade, Elevator-Pitch Shimmy” Approach: At the end of a semester in which we grade hundreds of papers across multiple sections and various courses, the computer will eventually spit out a number that correlates to your grade. In more than a few cases, that number will be riding juuuuuuuusssst on the line of a potentially life-altering edge.

For example, if 75 is the demarcation line between a C and a C-, and you need a C or better to continue in your program, you might find yourself sitting at 74.89. The difference between having to start all over with a course or be able to take what you’ve likely scheduled for next semester hangs in the balance of a professor’s attitude regarding rounding, grade-grubbing and the degree to which they want to tolerate you again.

Here’s the best I got for what I would consider “death grades,” the line between pass/fail, advance/retake or B-/C+ (It’s hard to sleep at night knowing you were THAT close to a B of any kind and came up short.): If you’re within a point or two of that death grade, we professors promise to tell you before we file. You have 24 hours to make up a 30-second elevator pitch that would convince us to buy your argument for a better grade.

If you use the words “deserve,” “worked hard,” “need this to graduate,” or any other whiny bull-pucky, you’re done. Gimme at least one or two concrete reasons that I told you were relatively important to this class that you learned or did that make you worthy of me shimmying  up your grade a tad.

My discretion in the end, but I gave you a chance.

And finally…

 

The “But I Tried Really Hard In This Class” Resolution: When your grade is somewhere in the vicinity of the Mendoza Line and you missed so many classes that I almost called in an Amber Alert on you , it’s kind of ballsy to make the claim of effort.

That said, numerous students do this every year, so here’s the best solution:

Good luck with finals and we’ll see you next time!

A bitter personal analysis based on your font choices

The Journalism Hivemind and I were getting a bit punchy near the end of the semester last year, so we started a running list of fonts that were seeming to pop up in class assignments, departmental memos, formal decrees and other correspondence that really bugged us.

We started our bitter streak with a simple prompt:

Pick a font and then tell me something harsh it says about the people who use it.

What follows is a good-natured look into the darkest recesses of our souls. Enjoy:

Luxurious Script: You spend half your work day practicing your married name, even though you aren’t even dating anyone.

Cochin Italic: You think your unwanted sexual advances against female coworkers are charming office banter because nobody can resist your appeal.

Fuzzy Bubbles: Your life goal was to be a kindergarten teacher, but for all the wrong reasons.

Calibri: You don’t know how to change fonts in Word and your grandson has stopped returning your phone calls.

Bauhaus 93: You are stuck in the 1980s, Miami Vice edition.

American Typewriter: You use the word “manifesto” in casual conversation way, way, way too often.

Arial Black: You probably yell at the counter help at the airport about having to pay a check-bag fee.

Stencil: You play at least five hours of “Medal of Honor” games each night and you can’t do three pushups without vomiting.

Baskerville: Tell me you wrote 20% too long without telling me you wrote 20% too long.

Ouch: You are a receptionist at a doctor’s office

Fraktur: You are a member of a white supremacist militia, which you always refer to as “a certain social club.”

Copperplate: The font says “formal proclamation,” while your professor knows you were thinking, “How do I get to the page count for this essay without doing any more actual work?”

Comic Sans: You have ten different substitution requests for your restaurant order. You have a desperate need to be liked. You try to achieve this by being unassuming and giggly. It’s not working.

Cracked: You want people to think you’re dangerous and edgy. You are not. Stay away from the skate park and get back to your mother’s basement where your PBJ with the crusts cut off awaits you and your 8Chan alter-ego.

Papyrus: You’re stuck in the 80s and still have Aqua Net-infused mall hair or a mullet. You think this font says you’re unique. What it really screams is desperate for someone to take away your blue eye shadow or Stetson cologne. You also know you hate Calibri but don’t actually know anything about fonts.

Old English: When you encounter your fellow Live Action Role Players in public, you greet them in iambic pentameter. OR (insert forearm FAMILY tattoo….)

Jalapeño: You really really really want it to be taco Tuesday every day

Courier: Your favorite color is beige. You wear thick glasses. You abhor all technology. You wish it was still 1954.

Century Schoolbook: You keep a constant watch over your red Swingline stapler, which you non-ironically acquired before it became a pop culture icon in “Office Space.”

Roboto Light: You think you’re too cool for Times New Roman. You’re not cool, you aging hipster. Get over yourself.

Lucida Handwriting: For those who want to give that little extra “human touch” when writing creepy anonymous stalker letters to neighbors about where they place their garbage cans.

Throwback Thursday: May the Odds Be Ever In Your Favor: Coronapocalypse University Edition

After the week that was, I needed something humorous and I’m imagining more than a few of my friends have that same vibe. I dug this up partially because it made me laugh and partially because I imagine we can all determine how bitingly accurate I was in some of these predictions.

Have a good, safe end to your week.

 

May the Odds Be Ever In Your Favor: Coronapocalypse University Edition

We start school today and that always feels weird, given that most of my colleagues have already got a couple weeks under their belts by this point in time. I usually feel like the guy in “Spinal Tap” who can’t get out of the pod, watching the rest of you deal with what’s going on while I’m stuck in limbo:

That said, this year, I feel like the last miner into the shaft, looking around me and seeing an awful lot of dead canaries, and thinking, “Hmm… maybe they’ll decide I shouldn’t go in there….”

Thanks to the coronavirus outbreak, pretty much everything we’ve watched this year has involved numbers, percentages, odds and more. With that in mind, here are some odds and numbers to consider as we continue our college/university journey through Coronapocalypse 2020:

87 – Percentage increase of students who request a completely online version of your 8 a.m. class when compared to your noon class.

4 – The over/under mark for number of weeks you are doing in-person classes before a COVID spike moves you completely online. (Take the under.)

5:1 – Odds of the student who asked for online accommodations for “health-related concerns” ends up on a YouTube video licking a doorknob at a frat party.

2:1 – Odds that despite your school’s edict that only essential personnel are on campus, and that nobody come to campus who isn’t needed, and the proclamation that “We are all in this together,” Parking Services will ticket you for being 6 inches over the line in a semi-empty parking lot.

10:1 – Odds that your university will create a mandatory two-hour weekly meeting of some kind that is supposed to help you deal with all of the extra work and anxiety you are feeling right now.

1,001:1 – Odds that group will make things better for you.

9:2 – Odds the carrots you left in your office before everything shut down in March have developed language skills by now.

8 – Number of professors who will be fired for accidentally uploading a sex tape instead of a lecture file because they never bother to label any of their video files and they stick them all in a file folder marked “Stuff” on their hard drive.

1,020 – Percentage increase in successful Title IX complaints, thanks to Zoom lectures providing video evidence of what everyone at your school has been complaining about for years.

247 – Dollars you will spend out of your own pocket to record your lectures and post them after your university has stated it will “provide any and all equipment you deem necessary for online learning, free of charge.

11 – Percentage of student put on quarantine trying to tunnel out of their dorm room like Andy Dufresne in the “Shawshank Redemption.”

0.03 – Percentage of students who are old enough to understand that reference.

3:2 – Odds at least one student forgets a mask each class period.

47 – Percentage of faculty members looking for “that adapter thingy that came with my recorder” before every live lecture.

0.47 – Percentage of faculty members who will find it.

87,351,842:1 – Odds your school makes national news this year for anything other than a coronavirus outbreak or a student getting stuck in a Taco Bell drive thru window after being shorted a chalupa.

754 – Number of times your university president or chancellor uses the word “unprecedented” in every email or speech this year.

Even Money – Odds the student who skipped every lecture, swore they saw them all online and “worked really hard” in this class, will fail with a score almost too low to compute.

8:1 – Odds you will be able to identify at least half of your students after the mask mandate is repealed.

7:1 – Odds you are able to identify at least half of your students in any given semester.

12 – Percentage of professors who will ask, “Instead of using (fully supported video software program the university has used for years successfully), why can’t we use (glitchy video program only six people know about on Earth, but they read about in The Chronicle of Higher Education and think will somehow be better)?”

5:2 – Odds the professor on a video lecture isn’t wearing pants.

83 – Percentage of professors who want to do live streaming lectures because “they’re more authentic,” that will be interrupted at least four times by pets, kids, the mailman or a door-to-door Bible salesperson.

96 – Percentage of students who say they watch every video lecture entirely.

0.96 – Percentage of students who actually watch every video lecture entirely.

92,249:1 – Odds your school stays open all year without a single problem.

100 – Percent of school administrators who will “express surprise and disappointment” that they were unable to keep their schools open all year, even after watching dozens of other schools crash and burn all around them.

 

Have a great semester, everybody!

Video Recording of “The Last Lecture” by Vincent Filak

A number of folks asked if there was a recording of  “The Last Lecture” I did for the UWO Greek community. Adviser Angie Zemke was nice enough to send me the file of the event and I did a cut-down of it to make it work on YouTube.

Here’s my 38 minutes of fame in all its glory. I had a fantastic time doing this and from what I heard, the students laughed a lot more than I could hear up where I was. Of course, all I heard was the blood pounding in my ears as I tried not to curse, so there’s that.

Enjoy and thanks for your interest!

 

The Junk Drawer: Thanksgiving Leftovers Edition

At least I don’t THINK we’ve stored extra turkey in here…

Thanksgiving is a time of family, friends and food for most people. For us here at the Filak Farm, it’s “At least we didn’t end up going to the emergency room this year,” kind of day. Not to get too deep into the details of weirdness for us here, but let’s just say my Boy Scout training came in really handy this year and that burning plastic smells terrible.

Since leftovers are the course du jour these days, here are a few bits and bites from the past couple weeks.

From the “Know Your Audience” department:

We were supposed to have Thanksgiving dinner with my brother-in-law’s family, but the kids all came down with some sort of strange virus at the last minute. I called my mom to see if we could slide in by her house, and she and dad were overjoyed at having us.

I felt bad that we were basically doubling the number of people who were coming to dinner, and told mom that I was worried we’d make it so she wouldn’t have enough food.

She admonished me in the best way possible: “Vincent, get real. We’re Polish.”

And then I remembered our family motto: “If you leave a party we throw and you’re hungry or sober, that’s your fault.”

After all were fed to bursting, everyone still had leftovers to take home and mom basically filled her fridge as well.

It was a good reminder to remember my audience.

Speaking of which…

From the “Oh, buddy, did you knock on the wrong door” department:

I get that when you’re trying to launch some quasi-innovative project, you tend to blanket email everyone with your “special TV offer,” but when I got this one, I just had to laugh:

Let’s have fun with this:

  • Telling a textbook author that people find textbooks “expensive, bloated, and unengaging” has the same internal logic of telling someone you meet at the bar, “Damn, are you ugly! Wanna dance?”
  • I went to find this company’s “proven track record” of doing what it says it does. It’s a pretty short record and a pretty short track.
  • The bolding and underlining of one line really brings home the point that he’s not trying to sell me a textbook. I would really hope not, given his assessment of textbooks. This has the same internal logic of when you’re eating with someone and they say, “Dear GOD, this tastes terrible! Here, you try it…”
  • Spoiler alert: I did not sign up for my introductory meeting. Go figure.

This wasn’t the first time we covered something like this on the blog, but it bears repeating: Know your audience before you pitch something to the folks in it.

I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice-cream-related litigation

If you want to find an amazing story that goes way, way, way down the rabbit hole of the quest to get McDonald’s to have functional ice cream machines, here’s a piece from Wired that is truly amazing.

The author goes digs deep into court documents regarding an ongoing battle between a tiny startup company, a soft-serve-machine manufacturer and the fast-food giant itself over who can tell franchisees how to fix an ice cream machine. It also digs into potential corporate espionage:

Now the discovery documents from Kytch’s lawsuit seem to confirm Taylor’s specific attempts to replicate Kytch’s features, contradicting a statement it sent to WIRED in March that claimed that “Taylor has not imitated Kytch’s device and would have no desire to do so.” They show that in a May 2019 email, Taylor vice president of engineering Jim Minard—since promoted to chief operating officer—asked another Taylor staffer to “please buy a [Kytch] kit and provide me a written evaluation on the hardware and software.” Minard added in the email, “Seems we might be missing something in our approach to our connected equipment.”

Yet one more good reason to stick with Culver’s Custard.

For your “reading pleasure”

While in an Arizona bookstore a couple weeks back, I came across a book that warmed my heart:

I’m a huge fan of properly executed partial quotes, which is why it drives me batty when people use them in the dumbest possible way. Bethany Keeley’s collection of misused quotation marks is a total keeper, and still available on Amazon.

And finally…

From the “Do you know your ass from a plant in the ground?” department:

A student from my Mizzou days posted this notice about her work as a copy editor:

In case you’re not quite clear on this, here’s a quick John Oliver segment to help you out…

Good luck on your run to the finish line of the semester.

See you tomorrow.

Vince (a.k.a. The Doctor of Paper)

Catch a livestream of my “Last Lecture” (and amuse yourself while you’re watching)

This will be the last post until after Thanksgiving, as a couple important events are conspiring to keep me off the blog for a bit. I have a trip to Arizona this week to see my grandfather, a massive maelstrom of grading and the annual “How did Thanksgiving get here so fast?” trek of visits to family and friends.

The big event, however, is happening before all of that.

On Wednesday, Nov. 17, at 6 p.m. Central, I’ll be delivering a “Last Lecture” to the fraternity and sorority folks out here at UWO. I was invited based on student recommendations and I have to admit this is one of the biggest thrills of my professional life:

(In case you are unfamiliar with the “Last Lecture” concept, it was made famous by Dr. Randy Pausch, a professor who had been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. With less than three months to live, Pausch offered his audience a view on how to achieve their childhood dreams as his “Last Lecture.”)

If you are interested in watching me try not to curse accidentally in front of a ballroom filled with students, the link to the livestream is here.

(If you want to dial in from one of about a squillion places, here’s the full 4-1-1 on all that.)

To make this a bit more fun for some of you, especially those of you who know me well, I’ve created two BINGO cards you can use to keep track of my “eccentricities” during the speech:

Hope it helps. I’ll be back after the Thanksgiving break to help close up the semester. As always, though, if you need me, hit me up through the contact page and I’ll be there.

Have a great holiday!

Vince (a.k.a. The Doctor of Paper)

 

“Is ‘pole-dancing girlfriend’s monkey’ properly punctuated?” and other weird things to ponder on a Tuesday

As noted many times before, whenever something weird happens in media, friends tend to hit me up with a “Did you see this? Thought it would be great for the blog!” message.

They are always right.

Let’s get into it.

Sometimes, a headline completely sells a story:

A friend sent this along last night with a note: “Just wanted to make sure you’ve seen this headline…”

I hadn’t but I’m glad he shared.

Not a huge fan of “allegedly,” as we’ve noted before, but other than that… I’m reading this thing.

 

When people tell you to “shut the f*** up,” I’m not sure this is what they mean:

The spelling error is bad, but it could have been worse: “Thank you for your copulation.”

 

This is spondifferious in its censoriousness and its ridiculousness

A friend sent this to me with a note: “Discuss?” My take: When you sound like someone mocking Mike Tyson’s speech pattern, maybe you should rethink your approach to whatever it is you’re doing.

 

If you say it three times, does Beetlejuice’s cousin, Improvejuice, show up?

A former student sent this along from a press release she was working off of:

Press release from the university, it was the second sentence:

“The Golden Eagles improved from 2019 as they improved their team average from 30:50.31 to 29:49.95, an improvement of over a minute.”

Think they improved? 

I don’t know… Can you tell it to me in a more concrete fashion?

 

And finally…

That’s DOCTOR LORD “FILAK, YOU A-HOLE” to you, pal!

I don’t know what Facebook has done to its algorithms, but I’m getting a lot of weird suggestions lately. A female friend I knew well in high school had a birthday recently and it suggested I send her a “BUTT-wiser” towel as a thoughtful gift. It also decided that apparently I needed to up my self-importance game a bit, so it suggested this:

I bet all the Scottish lords who shop at Costco get some serious respect from the sample ladies…

Have a good rest of your day

Vince (a.k.a. The Doctor of Paper)