one of diane's favorite anniversaries shows up.
This is a culture in which when we want to say something is irrelevant, we say it's "history."
(Don't send me your answers. This is just a little way to expand your horizons. Honest.)
Hearst Corporation (owner of the Examiner) has bought The San Francisco Chronicle. So soon there will only be one paper in San Francisco. What it's going to look like, God only knows.
The other night Darin phoned me late to say he was coming home from the Guys. I told him the alarm was on (and he should turn it off before attempting to enter the house).
DIANE
I got scared. There was a report
on the news about a home invasion.
DARIN
You don't have to worry, that's
not likely to happen here.
DIANE
Well...you promise not to laugh?
DARIN
Um, okay.
DIANE
Right before the news I was
watching 48 Hours, which
did this hokey show on the
paranormal that was pretty
stupid, but the last segment
was about ghosts and I got all
scared from that too.
Darin LAUGHS.
DIANE (cont.)
Hey!
DARIN
You gotta admit, that's pretty
funny.
Can I help it if my imagination runs away with me when I'm alone? Sheesh. I'm a writer. It's my job description.
Yesterday Darin and Fernando set up the sound system in the living room perfectly, mounting teeny tiny cube speakers on the walls and adjusting the TV's position so as to perfect its location. I'd like to say I supervised, but pretty much I played Civilization and came in at the end, when it was time to watch TV.
I went to bed around 10:30 and read The Angel of Darkness by Caleb Carr for a bit, and Darin came down to tell me about The Sweet Hereafter, the movie he'd started watching, which he declared was the single most depressing thing he'd ever watched in his life.
That, pretty much, was our Sunday.
Twenty-five years ago today Richard M. Nixon resigned as President. I remain convinced he did this on the 9th so as to avoid tainting my birthday, which occurs tomorrow. (Hint. Hint.)
I remember talking to a friend from a writing class in the Bay Area who was younger than I was. I mentioned to her (in a rather disgusted tone) I'd heard a report on the radio that a survey of high school students at Nixon High School were spending several hours a week dealing with AIDS and safe sex and had no idea who Nixon was. And Jennifer said, "Well, AIDS is important. Watergate wasn't that important."
At which point I began to understand why people always despair about others who are younger.
I guess this goes back to a pet peeve that I have and Darin has (in spades)--pride in ignorance. For some reason, there are many people who are happy not to know something--if they don't know it, it must not be important.
We are not, as a people, blessed with the ability to say, "I don't know." Is that a peculiarly American trait? Can Canadians (to take a nearby example) say, "I don't know. Can you tell me more about that?" Not knowing is okay. You can't know everything. Not being interested in knowing something...well, I know I'm not interested in everything, but I like to know a little something about every topic, so at least I'll have a clue as to what others are talking about.
I do not understand the people who don't know something and who don't show any interest in improving that situation.
One of Darin's favorite interview techniques is to ask a programming question in all likelihood the candidate cannot answer--in fact, most of the experienced programmers he works with would have a hard time answering it without more time than you have in a job interview. He doesn't do this to show off how much he knows; he does it in order to see how long it takes between the time the candidate realizes he doesn't know and the time he finally says, "I don't know." The ones who continue to obfuscate, who continue to bullshit when it's clear they're foundering, get a big "No" from Darin. Because he can't work with someone who can't admit, "I don't know this." Why?
Here's a good rule of thumb: If you continue to work on something as though you know how to do it when you don't, you will fuck things up.
Addendum: Darin explained a bit more about this to me. He uses this technique for managerial candidates in a technical company. He says, "I'm going to give you a list of technical terms, and you tell me what you know about them. Some of them are obscure, so it's okay if you aren't familiar with them." He tells them ahead of time, you see? And with some people he STILL can't get an "I don't know." (And with others he gets a belligerent, "I don't know!" filled with pride.) He does this because managers often meet with other companies, and he wants to know what they're going to do when technical questions come up--are they going to make stuff up, or are they going to say, "I don't know, I'll check with the technical team"? He wants to be sure they'll check with the techies, the guys who actually know.
We are a nation of people who assume that bullshit is as good as knowledge. I see this all the time on (where else?) the Internet. In every arena--screenwriting, film, physics--I see people come in and say, "Well, it's like this and this," and actual experts in that subject say, "Why no, it's not at all like that." And the original poster cannot say, "Oh, I was wrong," but will continue to argue as though his opinion (what he'd "thought up" about the matter) was just as valid as a body of knowledge.
But it's not just the Internet, it's everywhere. This is, reportedly, one of the problems in Hollywood, particularly when productions start to spiral out of control. No one is willing to say, I don't know what I'm doing. And it always shows up on the screen. You begin to wonder if people do it in all fields, and if so, are we getting pilots who don't, in fact, know how to fly a plane, but are convinced that they can just "wing it"?
I've done it, I admit, and since I know a little about many subjects, I don't get caught as often as others do. But I'm always painfully aware of when I'm talking through my hat, and I don't do it as much as I did even ten years ago. I far prefer to know something about a topic before spouting off on it. Even when I know about something about the topic, I tend to be conversational, rather than didactic (in the worst sense of the word).
I got an e-mail today saying, "Add me to the journal webring."
After an initial flush of annoyance--what webring? I don't have a webring, I have a list of journals that have been around for a while, and I ask that people writing me mention how old their journal is, even though I do go to the site to confirm that archives are available--and an impulse just to delete the e-mail, I went to the site the writer listed.
Of course, it's not a year-old journal, or at least the archives don't go back that far.
Am I going to write back and ask what the hell this is about? No. Life is short. Hint: when you write someone out of the blue, be specific about what you want (so that all parties can be sure you have the right place) and be polite.
The answer to Saturday's question: Yes, Francisco Franco is still dead. For those of you who (sob!) don't get the reference, it's from the first season of Saturday Night Live, when Chevy Chase would report on Weekend Update that "Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead." I thought that was funny, even though at the time I had no clue as to who Franco was or why we were interested in his still being dead.
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Copyright 1999 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com