Christopher Hitchens died this week

The world lost an irreplaceable writer when Christopher Hitchens finally lost his battle with cancer this week. Only 62 when he died, Hitch wrote books, essays, articles, and was still churning out content in the weeks leading up to his death. The love has been pouring out of the media, particularly the publications he wrote for like Vanity Fair, Atlantic, and Slate.

 His Slate editor did a lovely round-up of some of his best stuff through the years, including his scathing obituary of Jerry Falwell. (It's incredible; here's the first line: "The discovery of the carcass of Jerry Falwell on the floor of an obscure office in Virginia has almost zero significance, except perhaps for two categories of the species labeled 'credulous idiot.'") And don't miss Hitch's instructions on how to make tea. (John Lennon and Yoko Ono did it wrong, apparently.)

But my favorite is this list of the 15 most memorable things to come out of his pen. He was an incredibly smart, concise writer. Some of the shorter favorites:

"What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."

"If you gave [Jerry] Falwell an enema, he could be buried in a matchbox."

And, of course,

"The four most overrated things in life are champagne, lobster, anal sex and picnics."

We'll miss you, Hitch.

Stephen Fry: "Context, convention and circumstance are all."

I am officially obsessed with this media form -- that is, typographic animation set to spoken word. And I love that it's so self-referential, that the language-benders are bending language to demonstrate how great language can be when bent.

A lot of my writing time lately has been spent on offline projects. I'll poke my head out on this and the other active blog I've working on right now, but fall always seems to snag me with a huge amount of work. But it's my last quarter as a full-time grad student, so I'm dedicating myself to a new form of caffeine (hello, coffee) and buckling down. But this video and others like it will be my study breaks, to remind me of why I'm doing it all.

A note on the video itself: I love that Stephen Fry distinguishes between lovers of language and the people who are annoying about it and ruin it for everyone. I often find myself frustrated with often-misused words (like the difference between "over" and "more than"), but I am reminded that language evolves, it belongs to no one, and it's no use to squabble over the small distinctions, especially in contexts where other aspects (like substance) are more worthy of focus. The crux of it is here: "Nor does the idea that following grammatical rules in language demonstrates clarity of thought and intelligence of mind." Grammar is a tool we use to communicate effectively, but it is not a mastery of grammar that signals achievement: You still need something substantive to say.

At the same time, grammar is important because, as Stephen Fry says, ignoring it gives the impression that you don't care. "You slip into a suit for an interview, and you dress your language up too." And so while mastering grammar is not the end-all means to achieve good writing, it's still necessary to understand it. It's the framework we've created as a culture, the test to pass to prove you understand not only what to say, but how to say it. "You can wear what you want linguistically and sartorially when you're at home or with friends, but most people accept the need to smarten up under some circumstances. It's only considerate. But that's an issue of fitness, of suitability. It has nothing to do with correctness. There's no right language or wrong language any more than there are right or wrong clothes. Context, convention and circumstance are all."

Hear hear!

How to Ride a Bike

Dear Marianne Chrisos,

I was recently informed that you've forgotten how to ride a bike. You learned, but then you forgot, and you'd like to remember, to recall what it feels like to ride, the sensation. Here's what I offer:

Riding a bicycle is like playing a video game in real life. Chicago, specifically the North Shore, is fantastic for this. You choose the terrain: urban city streets, lakefront beach, the grassy knolls of Lake Shore and Lincoln Park. You choose day or night, heavy traffic or light. You can compete with those around you or just yourself. You can time it, or ride a certain number of miles, or just get on the bike and go. I like having a destination, something farther away, a few miles maybe, so I can feel my heart pumping and my skin heating up. I like riding in the cool fall, crunching through leaves, manually warming up my body, watching my own breath hit me in the face.

You start slow, rolling the bike for a few steps in the driveway, until you stop and swing your leg over. You put your right foot on its corresponding pedal and push down, lifting the other leg off the ground and finding balance as the wheels roll forward, taking you with them. Before you lose momentum, you put your left foot on the other pedal and push again, and then again with your right, and then again with your left. You may wobble for a minute, which is what the training wheels were for on your first bike, but you have a lower center of gravity now. Being short and female is helpful in that regard.

It's true, your butt hurts more on a real bike than on the video game bike. But that's okay because you're earning it. Once you get moving, you feel the wind in your hair and smell whatever season has crept over Lake Michigan. I like riding on rainy days because the air is cleanest and smells like laundry detergent designed to smell like fresh air. I also like riding on rainy days because it makes me feel like a badass. I ride harder and faster, feeling my heart quicken and my thighs ache as I push right, left, right, left, over and over, dodging raindrops. I stand up and push down with my body weight on the pedals to go faster, to keep up with the cars on Halsted Street. They usually pass me, but during rush hour I can easily outstrip an entire line from Wellington to Fullerton.

I pedal so hard that I arrive at my destination exhausted, in need of refreshment. Local tea and soup sales go up exponentially as cold weather grips the city and cyclists suffer runny noses and inclement weather. It's only September, but I've already bought enough hot beverages to pay for a new branch of a needlessly expensive coffee chain. (To whom it may concern: Corner of Sheridan and Irving Park, please. And make it snappy. Winter's coming.)

Once you work up some speed on the bike, or if you're on your way home at the end of a long day, you may choose to stop pedaling and drift. I wear a hat and gloves, and I sit up and take one hand off the handlebars, stretching my back up straight, watching my fellow urbanites or the city skyline to the south. Sometimes I stick my legs out to the side, brushing the grass or the puddles beneath me. If I ride through a big puddle, I bend my knees to lift my shoes up out of the water's spray, squealing involuntarily. I try not to splash runners or fellow bicyclists. They're already soaking wet, though, so it really doesn't make a difference except that it makes me look like a jerk for splashing them with more frigid water.

I would be remiss if I described the joys but did not outline the rules of the road. We're in America, so ride on the right side. We're in a major metropolis, so ride in the street, not on the sidewalks. Beware of turning vehicles, parked vehicles, and all vehicles. Put a white flashing light on the front of your bike and a red flashing light on the back, and tuck in your right pant leg so it doesn't get caught in the gears. (Getting tangled up is an unpleasant experience, especially in the middle of the Clark/Halsted/Barry six-way intersection.) And since there may be kids reading, wear a helmet.

So, want to go for a ride sometime?

Sincerely,

Brittany Petersen

No room for hat

I hate that my day doesn't feel accomplished unless I've written something. Not just something, but something I like when I read it back.

I hate that I cannot end a sentence without first fixing the beginning. Same with paragraphs. And thoughts.

I wish that I could read through others' eyes. I guess that would require thinking through others' minds, which is why it's impossible. Same reason you can't look at yourself in the mirror and not see, just, yourself.

I hate that I have to be in the mood to write. I need to be in that zone to do anything worthwhile. And I hate to admit it, but I can manufacture that zone. I'm capable of it, at least, when I really need to make it happen. Procrastination is my willful refusal to be productive.

I love writing and reading and thinking and writing about reading and thinking and reading about writing and thinking and thinking about reading and writing. You know?

I hate the font Papyrus. Don't use it. Also Comic Sans, though I admit to heavy usage between the years of 1996 and 2001. We were all young once.

I hate that I can't write something poetic without scrunching my nose at it. Judging it. Rewriting it until it's a little more logical, a little less touchy-feely. Fewer dreamy clouds and smoky waters, more hard lines cloaked in secrecy. But the reader can tell when something isn't genuine. You can count on the reader to see through you.

I love that I can write things in a room by myself and then have the audacity to put it on the Internet, where everyone in the world can see it.

Twilight

Source: redmudnessa.tumblr.com via Brittany on Pinterest

I would like, if you'll allow, to reclaim the word "twilight." While it was once a beautiful vision of dusk in summer, fireflies and green leaves, the sky tinged pink over the lake -- this once lovely word has been stolen by glittery vampires that enjoy teasing preteen girls. You can see why I'm upset.

I went for a run with my roommate tonight. We left at 7:30pm and ran to Lake Shore Drive, and the skyline came around a corner, and we ran in awe of Chicago, watching the lights glitter on Navy Pier, competing with the Hancock and Sears* Towers for attention. On the way back north we were treated to a sunset over the classy Lakeview architecture. The air felt clear, clean, accommodating. This is twilight.

When I was a kid I would visit my grandparents in the Iowa countryside on a weekly basis. They lived, still live, next to a man-made pond where a family of swans lived in the summertime. We'd play croquet, or go swimming in the pool, or wander around the weeds in between the pond and the corn fields. (Like I said: Iowa.) At night we'd eat dinner on the porch. Dinner included a meat, a potato, a corn on the cob with butter, some fruit, and a glass of milk. We'd eat delicious Midwest dinner and watch the sun set over the little pond with the swans. There were fireflies, and they flitted in the half-lit air. That was twilight.

I say we take it back from these teenage vampire books that have something to do with Mormonism or werewolves or not showing the juicy parts of sex scenes or what have you. We take it back from them and give it to dusk in the summer, to air heavy with sweet scents, to surviving on barbequed meat and watermelon, to playing hard and being lazy. Because that sounds much more likely to get you laid.

* I will never call it the Willis Tower. That's bullshit. It's the Sears Tower. Why do I feel so strongly about this?

Words of Wisdom from Ira Glass

(click the image to see it clearer)

Ira Glass, the host of This American Life on NPR, is one of the best journalists and storytellers working today. A graphic designer took a quote of his and turned it into a visual lesson on sticking to your guns in a creative profession. Keep your head down, keep writing, just keep swimming -- that's the theme as I face two more weeks of summer school, followed by four weeks of relative freedom, before diving right back into class and student teaching. Grad school is incredibly rewarding, but man, do I miss that dozen hours of my week. Anything worth having...

Another edition of me trying to justify my graduate study

This is my textbook for my Language & Style summer class. Doesn't it look super interesting‽ * I especially love the completely unrelated cover art depicting water. Or is that cigarette smoke? Either way, couldn't we find a more interesting way to depict grammar? How about this:


Much better.

Anyway, I'm studying for my test tonight on sentence structure, and I saw this as an opportunity to a) educate the world, b) defend my choice of master's study, and c) procrastinate while actually sort of studying in a way kinda.

Turns out everyone who's been freaking out about English grammar since, er, grammar school is sort of overreacting. This is mostly because we teach grammar really badly. In truth, there are only six possible sentence structures in English. Six. Total. If you want to feel like a grammar gorilla on cocaine -- all-powerful, all-knowing, and sort of depressingly manic -- then lend me just five minutes of your day.** Here's what you need to know:

You are aware, of course, that all sentences include a subject and a verb. "The grammar gorilla likes cocaine." "The grammar gorilla chortles." "The grammar gorilla does not give a crap what you think of his hairdo." All perfectly acceptable American English sentences.

I'm going to give you a chart now, but please don't freak out. You can skip it and come back for reference.

SIX BASIC ENGLISH SENTENCE PATTERNS

be patterns SUBJ-VERB-SUBJECT COMPLEMENT
linking patterns SUBJ-VERB-SUBJECT COMPLEMENT
intransitive patterns SUBJ-VERB
transitive patterns SUBJ-VERB-DIRECT OBJECT
di-transitive patterns SUBJ-VERB-INDIRECT OBJECT-DIRECT OBJECT
complex transitive patterns SUBJ-VERB-DIRECT OBJECT-OBJECT COMPLEMENT

Hi! Okay glad to still have you here. So listed above are the six possible sentence structures in English. I'm going to glaze over the actual definitions and just use a transitive sentence as an example so I can get to the cool part, which is the fact that you can take any of those sentences and make them negative, passive, perfect, progressive, interrogative, or change tense (past/present/future) -- and it REMAINS THE SAME SENTENCE STRUCTURE. So for example:

You like occlupanids.

This sentence contains a subject, a verb, and a direct object (takes the action of the verb; what I like are occlupanids) -- so it's a transitive sentence. Now let's have some fun with it:

You liked occlupanids. (past)
You will like occlupanids. (future)
You don't like occlupanids. (negative)
You are liking occlupanids. (progressive)
You have liked occlupanids. (perfect)
Occlupanids are liked by you. (passive)
Do you like occlupanids? (interrogative)

So we've made seven new sentences that say completely different things -- BUT IT'S STILL THE EXACT SAME SENTENCE STRUCTURE. It's still got a subject, a verb, and a direct object. It's still a transitive sentence.

Is anyone else as bowled over by this as I am? I mean, the sentence element mix-and-match possibilities are literally infinite, and if you know how to boil it down to the basic elements of the sentence -- that is, the form word slots (nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs) as opposed to the structure words (conjunctions, pronouns, prepositions, determiners, etc.) -- then you can create anything. This, my friends, is what I went to graduate school to learn: how to finesse and manipulate sentences. Because, again, that's what writers do. Let's make this sentence as crazy as we possibly can:

Have occlupanids not been being liked by you?
(past passive perfect progressive interrogative)

It's still the same sentence: "you" is the subject, "liked" is the verb, and "occlupanids" is the direct object; we've just thrown a bunch of other elements in there to mess with tense, aspect, positive/negative, and form. Nevermind the fact that there are probably very few opportunities to use a sentence like this. It is grammatically correct, and that's what matters.

For the record, this works for really long sentences too:

Last year, you definitely liked bright green and orange occlupanids despite the fact that my mother's best friend's uncle's sister gave you a huge bag of twist ties for your birthday instead.

All of the information beyond the basic sentence is adverbial; that is, if we stripped it all away, we'd still be left with a grammatical sentence:

You liked occlupanids.

And that concludes our lesson for the day. I hope you learned something. At the very least, you should now know what an occlupanid is.


* Yes, that is an interrobang. No, interrobangs do not get the respect they deserve from English grammarians. Fight the power.
** Satisfaction not guaranteed. But I'm gonna try really hard.

What a writing major does

My god I love Google image search.

Sometimes I have a hard time describing my graduate program to people.

"I'm studying writing and publishing," I tell them.

"Like books?" they ask.

"Well...yeah, sort of. Like, I have writing workshops on things like memoir and revision, and I study grammar and education theory and stuff too."

It's surprisingly vague and hard to explain, and it actually took me a full year of classes to understand what I was really in grad school for. It's not unusual for me to not really grasp the full extent of the syllabus until eight weeks into the ten-week class, and that's fine because it presents me with a series of satisfying "Eureka!" moments on a regular basis.

Now I've only got four classes left to go before getting my MA. One of those classes -- "Language and Style for Writers" -- I began yesterday in an intense 5-week summer session. (Quarters are normally ten weeks.) My next class is tomorrow -- "week two," if you will -- and I again find myself staring at four chapters of reading from the most vaguely titled textbook I've ever seen in my life: Rhetorical Grammar: Grammatical Choices, Rhetorical Effects (6th edition, natch).

But I'm a few pages into the introduction -- which, I will add, was not actually assigned reading but I decided to read anyway because it might give me a clue as to what the class is really about -- and I'm intrigued enough to procrastinate a bit with a blog post.

What caught my eye was the definition the authors offer for the title phrase "rhetorical grammar," which is basically the choices a writer makes regarding audience, purpose, and topic. The authors use an example of the difference between writing a text message to a friend and writing a formal fundraising request to the university dean. Each format has its own conventions, from spelling to sentence structure to punctuation to emoticon usage, and each audience has certain expectations. Those grammatical choices, particularly those related to sentence structure, are rhetorical grammar -- and the subject of what I'm studying in class. How to manipulate sentences. Because that, my friends, is what writers do.

And yes, it's past 10pm the night before class and I've paused while reading the introduction to my reading, which is not actually part of the assigned 80 pages, to inform the Internet of just what it is I'm not studying. I'm taking masochistic procrastination to a whole new level here, folks.

So You Want to Write a Novel

These really don't get old. Click here for the journalist version.

"How many editors will Random House assign to my novel?"
"Minus 13."
"--Because it's going to need a lot of editing. I'm not the best speller."

Twenty-somethings: Choosing a Lifestyle

So many lifestyle choices, so little time.

A quotation from New York Times columnist David Brooks as the commencement speaker for the Brandeis University 2011 graduating class:

"If you are like most college grads, you will spend the next decade of your lives moving from city to city, school to school and from job to job experimenting with different careers and lifestyles," he said. "While you do this, by the way, your parents will slowly go crazy. Everything will be contingent and uncertain."

As Brooks adeptly points out, our generation -- that is, the people born basically in the 80's and now spanning the powerful 21 to 31 demographic -- is behaving differently. Part of it is a necessary reaction to the economy and the job market; we must be willing to move for jobs. We become transient. I, who was raised by transients who wandered a full 3,000 miles from their birthplace, have resolutely made myself a home in Chicago. I extol its wonders -- lovely parks, Midwest attitude, North Ave Whole Foods -- while continually discovering new joys (Lake Shore Drive running path) and setbacks (pee smell that permeates the loop in the summer). It's a big city and I'm young/hyperactive and I like it here.

I know in my heart I probably won't stay in Chicago forever. There's too much of the world to see. I may leave for a few years and then return for good -- I'd like that, actually -- but I belong to the generational mindset that home is where I charge my cell phone. It's that attitude that has allowed my peers and classmates to fling themselves around the world -- Amsterdam, London, the Ukraine, not to mention Atlanta and LA and Portland and so forth. This, our twenties, is the time for adventure and experimentation.

With my location settled for now, and as I hazily hobble toward some sort of career path as a grad student, Brooks would probably agree that I can focus on experimenting with lifestyles. It's like trying on costumes. Do I want to be a jock or a bookworm? Should I spend my lunch hour socializing or exercising? What statement does my hairstyle make? In what clubs and boards and music ensembles will my time investment be worthwhile? Is there a job I'd want where a tribal neck tattoo would be inappropriate; and if so, how about an eagle and the U.S. flag emblazoned across my back? These, I submit, are the important lifestyle decisions of the typical (that is to say, self-absorbed American) twenty-something: It's about how you spend your time and what image you're projecting to the world and how true a snapshot that is of who you really are. It's why we're all so obsessed with Facebook and Twitter; social media is another foundation for building and maintaining a reputation. It's like being in high school again, but with slightly less naïveté and hopefully better hair.

Why not?

This year I have two cousins graduating from high school, five siblings graduating from various elementary-age grades (my twin brothers just finished kindergarten!), and a handful of friends finishing up Bachelor's and Master's degrees. Meanwhile even more of us are still trudging along, sorting through term papers and auditions and manuscripts, the terminal diploma months or years or decades away.

But the toil is the equivalent of the journey, especially if that journey (studying writing) has no set destination ("writing the great American novel" is so twentieth century). So all there is left to do is apologize to our parents, promise them we're happy and well-adjusted and thriving no matter what lifestyle we're attempting this week, and ask them to pretty please mail just one more check. Last one, I promise.

--
P.S. Completely unrelated, but you should check out my side-project with my buddy Kevin Rinz titled New Age Whitman. The summer blog/Twitter (@NewAgeWhitman) will culminate in a raucous drinking event in August. I'm really excited for the power trip that is ordering interns to reconstruct the eastern seaboard using empty Bud light cans. Follow along in the fun!

The Great American Novel

Alas, I wish I knew what this really was. Possibilities range from the next Great American Novel to Donald Trump's contemplative memoir on why he's such a dick to the lost manual for my microwave. (I still haven't figured out how to thaw meat without cooking the edges.) I hope there's at least an index.

via 9gag.

How far can I take meta if I blog about Scre4m?

I'm not a big horror movie fan. My roommate is, and so I find myself stumbling into a Saturday afternoon viewing of a slasher flick with more regularity than ever before. It's pleasant; just yesterday we watched Crispin Glover slice up the standard set of collegians in a forest somewhere. (The most memorable thing from that one was his strange, backwoods hick accent.)

Despite my lack of enthusiasm for the genre in general, I have always been a huge fan of the Scream movies. The second and third installments lacked a bit of the bravado and originality of the first, but I loved the concept. They're horror films made for the horror film nerds. Though I am not a horror film nerd, per se, I am a nerd in other ways, and I dig the self-referential nature of the movies. The humor in the recognition of parody makes the gruesome death scenes worth it, and the archetypal characters are designed to allow you to see the fun in human death -- not an easy feat when considered objectively. Why the hell do we enjoy watching people killed on film? That's sick, people. Just sick.

That said, I was totally on board when Scre4m was announced. The first Scream movie came out in 1996 and spent approximately seven years on a recorded VHS tape in my room, watched and rewound an average of twice a month for the duration. So hell yes we were going to Scre4m on opening weekend. It would be like a return to childhood. A classic formulaic plotline, executed perfectly. (I have an admittedly eager/gushy opinion of Wes Craven.)

So tonight my friend Shara and I went to see it and I'll tell you, dear Reader, we were not disappointed. Scre4m is a masterpiece. It may even be better than the first movie, but that may be because now the franchise is such a powerhouse in the genre -- in Hollywood in general -- that it can afford the most impressive cast including originals Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox and David Arquette as well as bit roles for the pseudo-famous and modern hot young actresses Anna Paquin, Kristen Bell, Hayden Panettiere, and Emma Roberts. The big budget nature, which usually kills horror movies because they're blown so out of proportion (providing material for the decidedly less witty and more base-humor-dependent Scary Movie series), is instead spent on making the newest Scream sequel the perfect archetype. It's like Wes Craven is actually attempting to make the exact model on which we should base all future horror movies. He does everything right -- tension-building, semi-memorable characters whose deaths don't break our hearts, and breaking the rules that are set up within the structure of the movie to glorious effect. (The scene with Kristen Bell and Anna Paquin is, by far, my very favorite. I mean, shit you guys. It's genius.)

Seeing Scre4m in a theater on a Sunday night felt like being back in high school. The bored and haggard concessions kid, the trendy urbanites spending their parents' money on candy and video games, the groups of freshly driver's-licensed teens walking in pods of five or more. And of course, the archetypal, self-referential horror movie, where we watch characters do exactly what we're doing right now. It's all about killing the horror film nerds who are sitting there, watching a horror movie. Holy crap that's us you guys!!!! SO META.

And there's the heart of the matter. The great thing about the 2011 version that may push it beyond the 1996 original is the presence today of the word to describe this entire phenomenon: meta. Courteney Cox's character even uses the term in the movie, tacking on a line about how it's "what the kids are calling it" or something like that. Urban Dictionary defines "meta" as such, and gives an example:

"A term, especially in art, used to characterize something that is characteristically self-referential."

"So I just saw this film about these people making a movie, and the movie they were making was about the film industry..."

"Dude, that's so meta. Stop before my brain explodes."

It's like the concept and this horror franchise were made for each other. And the use of technology -- cell phones, texting, even live web streaming -- is perfectly in line with how this generation is living. No one was tweeting the Woodsboro murders in this one, but it's a safe bet that will be integrated into the script for Number Five.

The films are scary, as one of the characters points out, because it could happen. The audience are the potential victims. There's even a scene in Scre4m where a bunch of teenagers throw a party knowing that it's a likely target for the killer because that's what comes next in the horror film stereotype: a bloodbath at a party. You don't have to be a bad person in order to be killed by a psychopath, the movies tell us -- you just have to have the bad luck to attend the same high school or live in the same town. Of course you can help your situation if you remain a virgin. And don't run up the stairs when running out the front door is even an option. It's common sense, people.

As soon as this movie about horror movie fans being slaughtered was complete, Shara and I laughed about the fact that we had to go into a dark parking garage -- something that doesn't go so well for one of the characters in the movie we'd just seen. As I dropped her off a block away from her apartment, I wished her a safe walk -- not out of the ordinary for midnight on a busy street in Chicago, but with a bit more paranoia on the edge of my voice. I drove home alone, car doors locked, mulling over the movie and deciding how to best describe why I'd enjoyed it so much.

I parked my car behind my building and walked up the stairs to the back door of my third floor apartment, scanning my surroundings as I took out my keys. I'm always taken aback when I see a neighbor on their porch or something I don't notice right away, but no one was out. I realized then that I was missing the key that opened the back door. I stood there in the dark, shuffling around in my pockets, not wanting to wake up my roommates but feeling, you know, a bit on edge. Time to not be outside anymore. But I was locked out. What great timing, my grim imagination said.

Luckily my roommate was awake to let me in. I went straight to my computer to overshare my life on social media, as my generation is wont to do, first on Facebook and then on my blog. I'm not normally one to write reviews, but this felt right. It felt meta. I mean, the point of these Scream movies is to take the suspense to the next level, and the chosen vehicle is this millennial concept. It's original because it breaks new ground and scares us in the exact same way it's always scared us, but we still didn't see it coming. We're outsmarted, and it's one of the rare times that feels good. By writing about it, I become part of the story.

It's successful because you can't walk out of that movie and not see the potential for your own situation to suddenly turn into your own fatality. It's haunting. As I sit in my room typing this, it's raining outside. Middle of the night. My door is cracked so my cat doesn't wake me up when she tries to get in at 3am. It also means someone could enter my room silently. I locked the back door and found my key. It's actually sort of comforting to talk to the world via my blog like this though. With all this meta, horror-movie-watchers-being-killed-stuff flying around in my brain, at least you guys know I haven't been murd

I mean, lyricists are writers too

As you may or may not be aware, Dear Reader, I've embarked on a second blog experiment. The other blog -- let's think of it as a mistress, really, because I loved you first -- is dedicated to celebrating "quality" music, where "quality" music is defined as "that which sounds as good if not better performed live" (as opposed to in a studio, within arm's reach of the auto-tune button).

Inspired by Friday Jams, the blog is called Dai(ly) Jams and (shockingly) it features one live music video per day. I encourage you to check it out, because so far I'm pretty much just talking to myself. Which, you know, isn't new, but it gets boring after awhile. I'd especially love video suggestions!

In writing Dai(ly) Jams, I've realized something of a paradox: Despite my intrepid insistence that I'm a writer, I actually spend very little time listening to song lyrics. I'm terrible at memorizing lyrics -- an ailment my band meets with bemused frustration, no doubt -- and I almost never fall in love with a song because of the words.

It might have something to do with my childish ignorance of and aversion to poetry. I tend to recoil from things that I need to interpret -- foreign languages, Wall Street jargon, Edgar Allen Poe, to name a few. And a lot of songs tend to be veiled homages to...whatever. Their long lost lovers' boyfriends' dog. Or something. But some poetry -- for example, this piece by Carolyn Forché -- is undeniably incredible. The writing is exquisite, the execution damn near perfect.

Maybe my problem with poetry -- like that of romance novels -- is that most of what I've read is bad. In that spirit, and assuming that my formal poetry education began and ended with Dr. Seuss, I'm taking suggestions for must-read poetry. Fire away.

Generation Tattoo

Today marks the beginning of my fourth (of six!) quarter of graduate school at DePaul. In celebration, and because one of my classes this spring will be focused solely on revision of previously written pieces, I present to you a profile I worked on last spring. Thanks to a scheduling glitch, I had to interview my subject, Caroline Moody, the day after my own wisdom teeth extraction surgery. Considering the amount of vicodin in my system at the time, the subsequent write-up went pretty well, but I'm looking forward to working on more it this quarter. Maybe I'll have a new and improved version to post for you in the coming weeks. Until then, enjoy.

May 2010: Tattoo artist Caroline Moody works on a back tattoo for a client. Photograph by Brittany Petersen.

Caroline Moody is preparing to inflict wounds. She lays out her materials: gloves, needles, paper towels, razor, ink, tattoo machine. Her client, Michael Curcio, is nervous. This is his first tattoo. He had a few beers with friends before making a walk-in appointment at Infamous Ink on a sunny Saturday afternoon. Moody patiently comforts him as she readies her station.

“I get nervous every time I get tattooed,” she tells him. “Once you start it, you’re like, ‘I can handle it, I’m fine.’” But Curcio is pacing as he tries to distract himself from the impending hour-long pain session. “Do you have gum?” he asks his friend. He doesn’t, but Moody does. “I will not get tattooed without gum,” she says as she hands him a piece of fruity Orbit. “It helps. It’s something else to think about. You have to shut off that part of your body.”

They talk about the tattoo design; Curcio worries that a drawing for the six-inch cross he envisions on the back of his right shoulder doesn’t look quite right yet. He asks for Moody’s opinion. She hesitates before laying it on the line: “It’s douchy. I’m sorry,” she says. He laughs. “No. Be honest, by all means.” On the rare occasion a client asks her opinion, Moody tells the truth, and the exchange often leads to a better tattoo. “You’re going to get the best work if you tell your artist to do what they want,” she explains. “Like, give them an idea and give the artist freedom, and that’s how you’re going to get the best work.”

Moody and Curcio rework the cross to remove the tribal elements, which Moody identifies as the source of the obnoxiousness, and both seem happier. Moody makes a stencil of the design and applies it to Curcio’s shoulder, leading him to a mirror to scrutinize the placement. After he sends a cell phone picture to his mom for final approval, he lies down on the tattoo table and lets Moody gets to work.

As her needle digs into Curcio’s flesh, Moody’s face wears a look of quiet concentration. The tattoo machine buzzes and the tattoo shop manager turns on loud heavy metal as other artists work on their own clients. Customers in various stages of tattoo coverage wander the shop, flipping through the panel of tattoo designs that lines the west wall. Moody is one of five artists working out of Infamous Ink, which is one of at least a dozen tattoo parlors in the eclectic and trendy Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago. But Moody’s presence in the testosterone-fueled flash shop is different for one simple reason: She’s a woman.

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No official statistics are available, but it’s generally understood that women are scarce in the tattoo industry. Bill Johnson, the vice president of the National Tattoo Association, says that the number has increased in the last 20 years, but the ratio is far from 50-50. “Tattoo artists are judged on their ability, not their sex,” Johnson says. “[Gender] really doesn't matter.” But while the popularity of shows like TLC’s LA Ink, which stars not one, but three, female tattoo artists, has raised the profile of lady tattoo artists everywhere, there is still an intimidating imbalance. Even with another woman working at Infamous, Moody is clearly in the minority.

“Some people will walk in and think I’m the desk girl and that sort of thing, just because I’m a girl,” Moody says. She has to work even harder to earn their respect, and not just from her customers. “To be taken seriously, I’ve had to take on a lot of mannish concepts,” she says. “I’ve had to be more like one of the boys. Down to how I dress and how I talk, I’m taken more seriously if I’m not emotional or if I’m not overly girly or if I’m talking smack to these guys like they talk smack to me.”

Moody certainly looks the part of a professional tattoo artist. Her ears tote at least half a dozen piercings, including one-inch black gauges. Piercing, it turns out, was her gateway into the body modification culture. And of course, there are the tattoos: Ink covers her back, left forearm and right arm from elbow to shoulder. Eventually, she says, her whole body will be covered. Her favorite tattoos are those that are a little ridiculous, but well-executed – an eyeball with wings occupies prime real estate on her upper arm. Up next: a picture of Yoda playing a banjo on one of her legs, both of which are currently ink-free. Why? “I like Yoda and I like banjo music, and that’s about it,” she says with a shrug. A black t-shirt and the mouth of a sailor complete the ensemble.

“It’s like wearing your portfolio,” she says. “The more body modification, the more professional I look. Spending money on hair I consider to be part of my business. Dropping money on nice tattoo work, that’s part of my job. That’s building my career.” After all, she says, “If I didn’t want to be looked at, I wouldn’t have all this stuff.” Being one of the boys is just part of the business, and in the end she says she’d rather be respected than cherished. “I don’t think you can be respected as an equal and be treated like a lady, you know?” she asks. “I like having the door opened for me. But I know I can do it myself.”

Beyond being a woman, Moody is a member of a generation that sees tattoos drastically different than their parents. While tattoos were formerly the domain of bikers, gang members, and other fringe members of society, today at least 45 million Americans admit to having at least one tattoo. The percentage is even higher among younger brackets: Nearly two in five Generation Y’ers report having at least one tattoo. This is a promising trend for Moody, who, at 26, is just beginning her professional tattoo career.

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Born and raised to a “very Republican, Christian” family in Louisville, Kentucky, Moody was introduced to art by her mother, who taught print-making at the local university. “Art materials were always around,” Moody says. “I would go with [my mom] to the park and we would draw together. I loved my mom so much, I wanted to do what she was doing.” Moody attended Louisville’s DuPont Manual High School, a magnet school for visual arts, and developed a skill for painting, particularly portraits. She graduated in 2002 and went straight to art school, enrolling in the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore. Before she left home, she and her sister designed an abstract, “little whirly” tattoo (Moody had to redraw it eight times before her sister was satisfied), and they went together to a shop in Louisville to get inked for the first time. “I was just kind of fascinated by the medium,” she says. Even so, a career in tattoo art didn’t cross her mind, and she went away to art school with dreams of being a professional painter.

She didn’t finish her first semester at MICA before dropping out. “I was too young,” she says. “I was a pretty sheltered teen, so I was just not really ready to be thrown out in the world.” She moved back home and completed a semester at the University of Louisville before dropping out again. Unsure of what to do next, Moody took a job waiting tables. That’s when she became interested in tattoo culture.

“It was really pretty odd,” she says. “I went from T.G.I. Friday’s to a local Mediterranean place. The more people I saw with tattoos – I would talk to them about it, compliment them.” One day she met an apprentice who told her their shop was looking for a second apprentice. Moody went in armed with a portfolio of her painting work and was hired. She was in.

“I think I fell into it because I really enjoyed getting piercings and stuff,” she says. “That got me hanging around tattoo shops, and these people seemed really cool to me. I liked that they were able to do their own thing. I’ve probably not always been real okay with authority, so being self-employed is a pretty good thing.” Her parents’ reaction to her newfound career? “As soon as they figured out I could pay for school with it, they were on board,” Moody says. “My mom is going to get a tattoo when I graduate from college. I’m really excited. Me and my sister, we’re all going to get flowers.”

But Moody wasn’t quite ready to go back to school. “When I was getting into tattooing, I was in a rebellious mindset of fuck school, I don’t need school, I don’t need it, I can be an artist and do all these things,” she says. Shelving art school, she worked as an apprentice for a year and a half in Louisville before beginning to tattoo full-time. The first person she ever tattooed was a friend, her roommate at the time, who gave her free reign to do what she wanted. “He was like, ‘Yeah sure whatever, do whatever the hell you want,’” she says. “So I just did these little sketches of beer cans and did that on his leg.” And, as expected, that first tattoo wasn’t very good, and neither were the many that followed. “It’s totally understood that it’s going to suck,” Moody says. “That’s just how it is. Your first year of tattoos [is] going to be terrible.”

The transition from canvas to skin wasn’t painless. “You’re working on something that moves, breathes, bleeds, sweats, talks back to you,” she says thoughtfully. “It’s just a picky medium. The human body is fighting you. It doesn’t want this wound to occur.” Not to mention tattooers draw even the finest marks with a bulky, vibrating machine. Even so, the painter persisted, and as she slowly got better, she began to see herself as part of this new world – and it didn’t take long for her to realize how rare women are in the industry.

“It’s not really a feminine sort of art form,” she says. “It’s a manly thing. You’re doing something extreme, and it’s painful. It’s not something you associate with estrogen.” Also, she says, there’s an institutional bias; men have always dominated the trade, and the only way to become a tattooer is to convince these guys to teach you, a dependence that carries its own complications.

“Every tattoo shop...I’ve encountered a sleazy guy trying to sleep with me,” she says. “When I was an apprentice, it was the guys that were teaching me. And it was shitty because at some point I was like, ‘Nope, not getting down with that.’ And this one guy stopped teaching me things. I wasn’t going to put out.” Moody decided she had to get out of Louisville. “I kind of was up to my eyeballs in douchebags,” she says. “I was like fuck this, I need something else, I need to get out of here.” Moody attended a tattoo convention in Chicago and was sold on the city before she even returned to Louisville. She moved in August of 2008 and spent six months unemployed before Infamous Ink offered her a job.

“This shop is not my ideal place,” she says quietly as she watches her colleagues work. Infamous Ink is considered a “flash” shop, which means the tattoos are less conceptual artwork and more simple and straightforward. “It’s still a day job in a lot of aspects,” she says. “It’s like, hey, I want this name*. I want this tribal. I want this heart. And I’m like okay, that’s fine. I’m okay with mindless. It pays the bills.” It’s also a good way to learn.
As Moody began fine-tuning her tattoo craftsmanship at Infamous, she also started classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). “She’s a wonderful student,” says adjunct associate professor Marion Kryczka. “She’s really good, very serious, very smart.” Kryczka says Moody possesses a virtue rarely found in art students – humility – and that she is respected by instructors and students alike. She also has a reputation within the school as a great tattoo artist; her draftsmanship and color sense translate directly into her tattoo skills. “That’s a great thing,” Kryczka says. “I have nothing but praise for her.”

While her tattoo style tends toward “neo-traditional” – bold black lines, heavy shading and lots of color – her paintings have remained focused on portraiture. “I’ve always liked to draw people,” Moody says. “I like to capture a character.” A self-described people person, Moody sees the cross-over between her two art forms as logical: To paint a portrait, she digs into her subject’s character so she can represent not only their appearance but also their nature. A recent subject – a man she describes as “a big sleazy guy,” but also “a teddy bear” – is a perfect example of capturing this duality. As a tattoo artist, she says she gets to meet a lot of people she wouldn’t otherwise, and that’s one of the best parts of the job.

And so Moody leads two intertwined lives: one as an up-and-coming painter, and one as an up-and-coming tattoo artist. “I thought for awhile I was only a painter,” she says. “But now I can’t separate the two. Even the craftsmanship of my paintings has changed quite a bit.” After all, tattoos leave no room for error: “None of your work can be throwaway.”

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After an hour, Moody finishes Michael Curcio’s cross tattoo. He slowly stands up and walks over to a mirror to take a look. The skin is red and raw, but a six-inch cross, complete with fading (and no tribal douchiness) is permanently etched into his shoulder. “That’s cool,” he says, sounding relieved. Moody covers the tattoo in Vaseline and secures Saran Wrap over it with Scotch tape while relaying instructions on how to care for his new tattoo. Curcio seems shaky but happy.

“I figured at some point I’d put my kids’ birthdays or something around it. Something like that,” he says cheerfully. “If you’re going to put something on your body, I figure it should mean something.”

Cucio’s cross proved to be one of the last things Moody tattooed at Infamous Ink. The next day she went for an interview at another tattoo shop in Wicker Park and was offered a new job on the spot. As she takes a step out of the flash shop and toward more conceptual tattoo design, Moody couldn’t wait to mention the best part of the new shop:

“There’s a lot of ladies.”

* Tattoo artist tip: Never get the name of a significant other tattooed on your body. “To me that’s how you jinx things,” Moody says.

Riches Before Freelancing (Probably Not After)

So apparently the trick to becoming a gainful freelance writer is to win $2 million on Jeopardy! first.

Oh, well, if it's that easy...

Seriously though, Ken Jennings seems like a really cool guy. From computer programmer to Jeopardy! champion* to freelance writer...however you get there, just glad you arrived. Also happy to see he's using the money to enrich his life, as opposed to, you know, mansions and hookers and drugs.

Not that those things aren't similarly enriching.

* For those unfamiliar with Ken, he won 74 straight games of Jeopardy! in 2004 and holds the record for the most money won on American game shows. (He's appeared in others since his extended love affair with Alex Trebek.)

@MayorEmanuel's Twitter Picaresque

The story's a few weeks old now, but The Atlantic published the most complete and impressive piece on the @MayorEmanuel phenomenon of the last few months. They also happened to break the identity of the Twitter feed's owner -- Punk Planet founder Dan Sinker.

The entire article is worth the read, but what really sets it apart is the analysis of how Sinker used Twitter to create a whole new method of storytelling. Atlantic editor Alexis Madrigal compares the 1,942 tweets (about 30,000 words) to a real-time picaresque novel, noting how the immediacy of the content allowed the reader to experience the raw composing process: "Writing happens in fits and starts, so the finished product should look that way, too. And that's the thing, with a Twitter narrative, your lines come stamped with a time and the kind of software used to send the message. You can't conceal the process of writing, so you have to learn to love that transparency."

Twitter was the only place this could have happened. We'll talk about @MayorEmanuel for awhile, but those who didn't experience it first-hand, as it was unfolding, won't have the same visceral attachment. Madrigal again: "@MayorEmanuel is a new genre that is native to Twitter. When you try to turn his adventures into traditional short stories or poems, they lose the crucial element of time. The episode where the mayor gets stuck in the sewer pipes of City Hall just does not work when the 15 tweets aren't spaced out over 7 hours. It's all over too fast to be satisfying. There's no suspense." It was that real-time storyline that made @MayorEmanuel not just a funny side story to the election, but a revolutionary discovery in modern storytelling.

At the end of the article, Madrigal posts some of the "goodbye" tweets from @MayorEmanuel's many fans, and one expresses pity for those who weren't there to experience the phenomenon: "@ourmaninchicago: I genuinely feel sorry for anyone who didn't watch @MayorEmanuel unfold." The sentiment, no doubt, is widely shared, and indicative of the uncharted frontier we've found. The experience was surreal, a chance to watch (along with tens of thousands of others) a real-time fiction manifest itself in one Firefox tab, while the other tabs were tuned to reality. Everything was linked, everything was happening at once, and we all watched it together. I'd even go so far as to say that @MayorEmanuel had a positive influence on the Chicago mayoral election by focusing more attention on it, particularly in regards to young people. It was amusement, but it also served a public service.

Twitter can create a forum to watch a brand new, incredibly engaging form of storytelling -- a type of writing that is truly contained in the 21st century. It is a formula that can without doubt be recreated. Now the question is...who will write the next great Twitter picaresque?

White Chocolate: A Dennis Miller-Style Rant

copyright David G-H @ flickr (http://flickr.com/photos/19998197@N00/)

Chocolate is beautifully simple. There's a reason people go crazy for the stuff; it's delicious and enjoys a culturally iconic status on par with bacon. (And when the two meet, it's magical.) But the love is not unconditional, so can we all just agree that white chocolate is a terrible, utterly failed concept?

Now I don’t want to go off on a rant here, but no one worth their weight in Godiva enjoys white chocolate. It is an affront to the institution of chocolate, a merry “F-U” to the elegant beauty of mouth-watering morsels that are so awesome, they’re an aphrodisiac. Dark chocolate can literally get you laid. White chocolate hasn’t gotten anyone lucky since the 1970’s, and that was only because everyone was exceptionally stoned and named Lucky.

White chocolate isn't even chocolate: It doesn't contain cocoa solids, which are what give other chocolates their brown color. It's mostly milk and sugar. It might as well be a breakfast cereal aimed at eight-year-olds. Is Tony the Tiger looking for a new gig?

White chocolate is the Boone's Farm of chocolates. It's eaten out of necessity, not desire: Your parents are gone for the night and you’ve got one shot at getting drunk for the first time with your dumbass junior high best friend. You consume it because it’s there. It gets the job done. And then you weep with relief later in life when your taste buds encounter the real thing.

In case you’ve ever deceived yourself into believing that it isn’t that bad, allow me to present the pièce de résistance: White chocolate can’t be used in candy bars. How fucking useless is that? Think about it: Reese’s, Snickers, Butterfinger, Milky Way, truffles would all be terrible if encased in white chocolate. It’d be like eating vomit-coated peanuts. With nougat. And I know for a fact that the only people that enjoy that are the French.

If you're still on the fence, take a gander at the sort of marketing available for white chocolate:


I dare you to ever look at white chocolate the same way again.

Death to white chocolate. But that’s just my opinion. I could be wrong.

Steve Heminover, Mad Scientist

Last spring I got a chance to interview a really interesting guy named Steve Heminover who happens to do the light shows for all the sports events at the United Center. The fruits of that adventure are below. Enjoy!

Steve Heminover, Mad Scientist

The United Center is deserted. The building hums and the smell of stale beer lingers in the air. It’s eerie, cavernous. Yesterday, 22,000 spectators watched the Chicago Blackhawks defeat the Vancouver Canucks in Game 2 of the Western Conference Semifinal series. But tonight, we have the place to ourselves.

Steve Heminover flips on a light switch in the control box and motions me to a chair overlooking the ice. He turns on a computer that looks like it belongs in a NASA cockpit and drums his fingers on the table. Windows start-up chimes and after a quick test to make sure his half-a-million-dollar equipment is working properly, he starts the show. Four green aerial lasers shoot upward from the corners of the arena. A laser animation of Benny the Bulls mascot is projected onto the floor.

“It’s more impressive with the music,” he says apologetically. Indeed, Bulls fans might overlook the lasers with everything else going on during the opening – scoreboard videos, blasting music, dancing Luvabulls. The United Center is the only arena in the country with a permanent laser installation, and Heminover has been running the shows at Blackhawks and Bulls games for more than fourteen years.

“Have you ever played with an Etch A Sketch?” Heminover asks. “It’s like that but the computer does it so fast. It turns the beam on and off, changes the color, and it has to move it around and all these things have to coordinate at once to make it work.” The end result is a laser animation that represents decades of innovation.

Pre-game laser show during a packed Bulls game at the United Center. Photo courtesy of Steve Heminover.

Fifty-six-year-old Heminover has been working with lasers for so long that he’s helped build the foundation for the entire industry. “When I started in the laser business, nobody had any tools to do what I wanted to do,” he says. “So I had to invent them. I literally wrote, from scratch, my own graphics language for doing lasers.” That language is the ancestor to modern stereoscopy and 3-D technology. If you saw Avatar in 3-D, you can thank Heminover for helping to lay the groundwork.

“I used to wonder when I was growing up why I could do all these things,” Heminover says. “And I realized that what comes easy to me doesn’t come easy to other people. These things are gifts. I mean, I can work in several disciplines. To do laser light shows that I’ve done for years, I have to be an electrician, I have to be a plumber, I have to be a contractor, I have to be an artist, I have to be an engineer, I have to be a safety guy.”

In 1987, Heminover pulled his various talents together to found a multimedia company, Aura Technologies Inc., which specializes in finding creative solutions to technological problems. The company has designed instant-replay boxes for the Major League Baseball, fiberoptics for Motorola, and electronic packaging for Leo Burnett Worldwide ad agency.

“Someday you’ll see a cereal box with a video game on the front,” Heminover says. “You’ll just throw it away when you’re done.”

Heminover seems to live and dream in a futuristic movie. His office is decorated with Star Trek and Star Wars posters. His cell phone ring is a Jetsons jingle. He even looks vaguely like George Lucas. The geekiness pays off; with thirty years of experience in electrical and design engineering, it’s guys like Heminover that continually invent the things we couldn’t even conceive of ten years earlier.

“What did Arthur C. Clarke say?” he asks, eyes twinkling behind wire-rimmed glasses. “'Any technology, sufficiently advanced, will seem like magic.'” Whether it’s the rise of the Internet or 3-D printing, Heminover is always on the lookout for the next frontier. Lasers are just his day job.

At the United Center, my personal laser show is coming to a close. Before he shuts down the system, Heminover says there’s one more feature that is reserved for “special guests.”

“You’ll like this,” he says with a sly smile. “And they say we don’t have a sense of humor.”

He boots up software that came pre-loaded on the laser system. A faint “Pew! Pew!” sound emits from the control room speakers as the 50-by-50-foot grid lights up with the opening screen of one of the world’s most recognizable video games.

“You play Asteroids on the ice of the United Center?”

Heminover starts to answer, but the urgency of fragging a 30-foot laser rock distracts him. He hands me the controls to the world’s most expensive video game and asks, “You got another quarter?”

It's not the best quality video, but you get the idea.

Harlan Ellison tells it how it is

Some Wednesday inspiration for writers everywhere, straight from the mouth of a literary legend.

This clip is an excerpt from a 2008 documentary about Harlan Ellison. For more information, visit the film's website.

FDA Approves Alcoholism Treatment Pill

The time has come. Despite a volatile and expensive lobbying effort on behalf of the Southern California Rehabilitation Clinic Consortium, last week the FDA officially approved a revolutionary new pill that purports to cure alcoholism. Pharmacies have since been overwhelmed with prescription requests as alcoholism sufferers camped outside Walgreens all over the country, with some street corners turning into booze-soaked “last hurrah” parties.

“I bought my last bottle of gin today,” self-described alcoholic and Skokie homemaker Terry Davis said. “I’m excited to transfer my dependence from alcohol to pills. Fewer calories! I’ll be a Real Housewife of Cook County yet!”

The pill, dubbed the Voluntary Opportunity to Definitively Knock Alcoholism (or VODKA) pill, represses the desire to drink alcohol and replaces it with hallucinations of puppies and rainbows. Preliminary clinical trials reported a 99-percent success rate, but the limited choice of imagery has left some disappointed.

“Unfortunately I’m a cat person, so I’m looking forward to the next generation that is more animal-inclusive,” Davis said.

Alcohol rehabilitation centers have already felt the economic crunch induced by the VODKA pill. The Lindsey Lohan Suite at the Betty Ford Clinic – a room that is infamously booked months in advance by starlets anticipating their next rehab stint – has been vacant since Tuesday, with all future bookings canceled.

The Ford Center’s marketing director, Don Welsch, said the clinic is looking into a new advertising campaign to combat the exodus.

“We need to remind people that the presence of the VODKA pill hasn’t changed our mission: To offer safe haven for those struggling with addiction,” Welsch said. “Our clinic continues to offer top-notch rehabilitation service in the form of a 12-step program, counseling, business center, daily massages, personal trainers and fitness regimens, access to luxury retailers and custom boutiques, five-star chefs, a 12-screen movie theater, and a whole campus of recreation destinations, including private bowling alleys, swimming pools and an eighteen-hole golf course. Our new slogan is ‘Betty Ford: A home away from home!’”

In other news, retailers report that DVD copies of the ‘60s-era psychedelic children’s show “Spot and His Pet Rainbow” have seen an inexplicable 3,200-percent spike in sales since Monday.

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Our assignment for Humor & Satire Writing this week was to take an actual Newsweek story from 2007 about the development of an alcoholism treatment pill and turn it into satire. This is what I ended up with. I have new respect for Onion writers.

Question, for my own enlightenment: At what point did you realize this was satire? Or did you? What sounded realistic enough to be true?