I Know Where This is Leading...
Recent exercises in internet surfing have led me to rediscover the
Strange Horizons web site.
Strange Horizons, you see, is an online publication that's been running for almost ten years now; it focuses on speculative fiction that is made far more interesting by its access to an international stable of writers.
More importantly for this post, however,
Strange Horizons is also the home of one of the more fascinating lists on the Net. Ten years of running a regular publication schedule means that the magazine's editors have come across their share of common, clichéd, and castrated stories, and at some point they decided to make an interesting response: They gathered some of the most irritating and overused plot ideas they'd seen, and put up
the resulting list in their submissions area like some great warning in big red letters.
Naturally, this list makes for some
very fun reading. Got a story idea that you tend to use over and over again? It's here somewhere. Noticed a common theme among the current crop of bestsellers? It's probably about halfway down the page. The list isn't exhaustive and may be somewhat opinionated (because it's only based on
Strange Horizon's personal standards, after all), but it's great for a few minutes of derisive laughter.
Let's take one of my favorites as an example. Item 4 in their list of overused plots and themes notes the following:
Weird things happen, but it turns out they're not real.In the end, it turns out it was all a dream. In the end, it turns out it was all in virtual reality.In the end, it turns out the protagonist is insane.In the end, it turns out the protagonist is writing a novel and the events we've seen are part of the novel.
This never fails to get a chuckle out of me, because it's
true. Somehow, sometime, somewhere, there's always an aspiring writer who makes the fateful decision to end their masterpiece with "...and it was all a dream," completely unaware of just how insulting it is to readers and editors alike. (That said, I like to think that we all grow out of this phase, eventually.)
And lest you think that I only laugh at this because I'm almost completely immune from their identified stereotypes, I must point out Item 9 on their list:
A "surprise" twist ending occurs. (Note that we do like endings that we didn't expect, as long as they derive naturally from character action. But note, too, that we've seen a lot of twist endings, and we find most of them to be pretty predictable, even the ones not on this list.)
That, ladies and gentlemen, is my writing to a T, and I was still greatly amused.
That said, I didn't necessarily bring up this article to praise Caesar, and the reason can be found early in the list, in the lower reaches of Item 2:
Creative person is having trouble creating. Writer has writer's block.Painter can't seem to paint anything good.Sculptor can't seem to sculpt anything good.Creative person's work is reviled by critics who don't understand how brilliant it is.Creative person meets a muse (either one of the nine classical Muses or a more individual muse) and interacts with them, usually by keeping them captive.
To be honest, I
have seen a few of these floating around, and I have yet to read one that's good.
Except perhaps for Neil Gaiman's
Calliope.
Calliope, mind you, isn't technically a short story. It's a comic that was featured in
The Sandman series, published by DC Comics's Vertigo line, written by Neil Gaiman, pencilled by Kelley Jones and inked by Malcolm Jones III. It's about a struggling author who acquires one of the nine Muses of Greek Mythology and keeps her captive in order to establish a constant stream of ideas. In short, it's a plot that falls squarely on
Strange Horizon's list.
Except that
Calliope predates
Strange Horizon's list. Come to think of it,
Calliope seems to predate every single story concerning lost creators and captive muses. Neil Gaiman, in fact,
pointed this out about five years ago, and I assume that he's being perfectly straight with us on this matter.
I can only assume that
Calliope was an innovative story for its time, and that it probably ended up spawning an entire host of imitators (perhaps due to the hive-minded subconscious that all writers seem to share). Fast-forward a few years and you have a group of editors at an online magazine who have seen more "captive muse" stories than they can take. Ergo, the "captive muse" plotline is suddenly an overused one, fit only for a bit of laughter at how unoriginal people can be.
So what happens when an editor who has read one too many "captive muse" stories finally gets his or her hands on
Calliope? Such a hypothetical scenario boggles the mind.
I wonder if this is more a matter of "shelf life" than anything else. Certain plotlines
do run their course, after all, and it's entirely possible that something of great relevance and distinction in the past may no longer have the same impact in the present (which is why James Bond eventually moved away from the Cold War scenarios of his youth).
On the other hand, it could also be an issue where repetition diminishes creative impact. JK Rowling's
Harry Potter series, for example, spawned an entire host of imitations, most or all of which concerned pre-teens with magical powers, or fantastic worlds that exist alongside our own. But what would happen if, in the middle of this scenario, some excellent story of similar subject matter but better quality than Rowling's writings, came out? Would a significant audience turn their interest towards that work as well?
I suspect that the answer is "no" here, and I suspect that public reaction would consider the second work to be another imitator that couldn't stand on its own. Timing can be such a jerk sometimes.
So it turns out that I do have a problem with the
Strange Horizons list after all. The list does make me laugh, yes, because I know that both I and an entire host of writers out there have made the mistake of using those overused, overwrought, and overexposed plotlines. But the list also makes me think, because it now begs the question:
Does this mean that I shouldn't use those ideas for stories at all?And the answer is that I should still be able to write these things. I shouldn't care what
Strange Horizons or anyone else says in this regard; if I feel that a story is best served with a captive muse, a subtle plot twist, or even — God forbid — a release from the fictive dream at the end, then I should use it. I mean, if I feel that it should work like that... then, well... it
should work like that.
And if I write such a plotline, there's a good chance that some editor out there will gloss over my story, file it among the stereotypical "nonsense" themes that she has tucked away in her head somewhere, and start filling out the rejection slip. I like to think that there are
good editors out there, of course, but let's face it — everyone
does have their own prejudices, their own first impressions, their own pet peeves.
Innovation, I suppose, shouldn't automatically mean coming up with brand-new ideas. Innovation should also involve taking old ideas and pushing them forward in a new way. It's another lesson that we shouldn't immediately jump to conclusions about anything; sometimes it's better to see if that road actually takes you to where you expect it would.
We may have heard it all before, and perhaps we've already taken the words to heart. Perhaps we've even incorporated them as part of our belief system.
But I must conclude that lists like these are more curiosities in the long run. They're like the red octagonal STOP signs — there to provide a warning against a danger that may or may not exist. Eventually we have to hold the notion of stopping in our own minds, molding it to the point where we know why the rule exists and under what circumstances it can be bent or broken.
I feel that there are few certainties in the writing effort, and as interesting as this list can be, it shouldn't stop me from trying things out and seeing what I can do with them.
Neither, for that matter, should it stop anyone. Play with your ideas as you like.
The Last Regulation
No processed meats.
No internal organs.
Limited amounts of duck, lamb and other uncommon meats.
Lower amounts of beef and pork.
No fats.
Nothing deep-fried.
No alcohol.
Singular carbohydrates per meal.
Reduced consumption of cheese and other dairy products.
Less salt.
Drastic reduction in sugars.
Reduced consumption of fruits.
...
If you're curious, last night's dinner involved a nice cottage cheese spread on a loaf of processed cardboard, with some fresh salad greens on the side. Delicious.
Patience
Option number one: A eulogy for Michael Jackson.
Option number two: Another attempt at a short story.
Never let it be said that the prospect of writing a blog post was an easy one. I resolved to write something within the previous weekend, and these were the two things I was dithering about.
In the end, I decided to go for the short story. Michael Jackson has a ton of online memorials about his untimely passing already, and while I do want to leave some words on the death of a musical icon, I find it harder and harder nowadays to say something that the rest of the crowd hasn't already mentioned.
So I'm writing a short story. It's reached about 1,700 words so far, which indicates something with enough pace and flow to keep my interest. The only issue is that I don't have that much time to write nowadays, and even at my current rate of eight hundred to nine hundred words per session, it might take me a while to finish this. Michael Jackson will definitely have to wait a little longer.
What's funny is that I don't even intend for this work to be published anywhere apart from this blog. I'm just getting my groove on, that's all — it's been a while since I hit the publishing venues, and it's about time that I called back the muse from her cigarette break. I think of this as a bit of practice.
Stay tuned, then, and be patient. This stuff will come around.
Disclaimer: July 2009
I was conducting a short crash course on forum moderation the other day. It was right in the middle of a short discussion on plagiarism in forum posts, however, when somebody raised their hand in my face.
"I'm not taking questions yet," I said.
"Yeah, but how can you tell if a guy is infringing copyright or not?"
That opened up a whole can of worms, I have to admit. Discussion forums aren't the most common place to find copyright violations, seeing that most forum posts are short and reactive by nature. However, I recalled an old case where the
Sassy Lawyer found one of her articles copied and pasted in its entirety on a local board, which indicated that there was the possibility that such a thing could happen.
The first thing that I pointed out was the lack of "voice". A plagiarized post is usually presented in a tone and style that is different from the poster's usual approach, obviously because the work didn't come from the same source. In short, you could put the suspicious piece alongside the poster's previous works and identify marked differences between the two.
"Every writer has a distinct style," I said. "Taking my blog as an example, you'll notice that its works tend to go in certain directions. The words are chosen well enough that the posts make sense, but not so well that the writer doesn't come off as long-winded. There's also a noticeable trend towards strange humor, and the works of fiction make heavy use of dialogue and plot twists.
"That said, it's sometimes difficult to read tone and style, so another good move would involve Googling an excerpt of the suspicious work. Most Internet plagiarists will take stuff from whatever sites are handy, so if a work
was stolen, you're likely to find an online source."
Someone raised their hand. "What if somebody copied it from a web site, but changed some words so that no one could tell that it was plagiarized? Or what if they retyped it from a non-online source?"
"If anyone would be willing to put that much work into the piece," I said, "then they probably would not have taken the work in the first place. They would normally just write something on their own. But even if you make some small adjustments, there's a good chance that the rest of the work would come out on an online search."
"So what should we do if this happens?"
"Easy," I said. "You just have to remove the offending content, then place a moderator's warning at the bottom of the post. Tell them the right thing to do."
"Which is...?"
"That if they use any information from any outside source, they should include an acknowledgment of that source. Usually a link to the original web site is preferred. This is the approach that I use on my own blog — everything I write there is completely original, except for those areas that I borrow, reference or quote... and it's those items where I place my links."
"Okay."
"Sometimes you might run into the reverse situation — someone from outside the web site contacts you and tells you that one of their works was unlawfully taken and posted in the forums. In that case, you should remove the content and put up a notice in its place. Normally the authors would be willing to negotiate over the use of the work, but as a blanket policy, you should remove these at the first sign of any issues.
"I've never had such a dispute with any external source, but on my end, I would try to talk it over with them and smooth out any differences. If I would prefer to keep using the reference (which is unlikely for most forums), I'd negotiate.
"That goes for any work originating on the forum that gets used on the outside, too. For me, I want to get asked for permission before anyone uses my work. That's usually all that there is to it, and you'd be surprised at how many people don't even bother to do that. I don't want to find that me work got credited to someone else who had absolutely nothing to do with its creation. Neither do I want to find my work used to slander and ruin people, much less get interpreted outside its original context."
Another hand went up. "So what do we do if somebody's work on the forums gets stolen?"
"There's not much you can do, because that's technically out of your scope," I said. "But you should at least inform the owner if he or she doesn't know yet. From there, it'll be up to them on what action they want to take. Be prepared to provide information to the authorities if the issue gets investigated. I would suggest that you lock the post or thread immediately to preserve the evidence; that's what the timestamps are for.
"If you're wondering, the usual penalty for copyright infringement usually involves monetary compensation. Bigger cases may see a betrayal of trust of some sort, and may have stiffer penalties. That's not discounting whatever the owner of the work can think of. Online, there are things worse than what the authorities can dream up."
I looked over my tiny audience. "Any other questions before we move on?" I asked.
When there were no responses, I turned back to the whiteboard. "Okay," I said, "the next thing that we need to discuss is the prevalence of the 'Me Too' response in discussion forums..."
Math for an MBA, Part 2
The first part of the story is
here, along with the questions that took about an hour to consider and another hour to conceptualize. After some deliberation, I settled on four areas that seemed to fit into the "MBA Entrance Exam" mold: Percentages, Averages, Multiple-Variable problems, and Logical Reasoning.
Percentages are simple problems involving percentage calculations: "What is 75% of 40?" belongs in this mold. They have a very practical real-life application in bank lending and interest rates, occasionally make guest appearances in Accounting problems, and tend to show up on project status reports. As a result, I felt that a refresher on these would not be amiss.
Averages are similarly easy, although I wanted to approach them from a roundabout direction. Most problems in this area involve calculating the average of a set of values; I wanted to turn this on its head and ask a question where you needed to get a specific value in a series, given the average as one of your clues.
Multiple-variable problems, on the other hand, were certainties. I had given a friend some help
on one of these for her MBA class before, so if there were any problems that were likely to show up, it would be these. You've probably seen them before; these are the tedious word problems where you have to figure out the values of more than one item.
Logical reasoning is harder to describe. This is not a subset of problems, mind you, as much as it is the ability to organize given information, identify an unknown value, and then use one to work towards the other. It's obviously used extensively in business, although in a less mathematical sense. But I'm convinced that it's the mathematical training that helps us apply it to non-math outlets.
Given this outline, all that I had left to do was to write the questions:
1. Three chickens can lay three eggs in three days. In how many days can you expect 18 chickens to lay 18 eggs?This was a question of logical reasoning, plain and simple. I see it appear in a lot of IQ tests and other cognitive exams, and I've seen some very smart people give some very wrong answers as well. Most people, in fact, will trust in their faulty pattern-recognition senses and say "18 days!" right off the bat.
The answer is a lot more mundane. If three chickens lay three eggs, with all other factors being equal, then it stands to reason that each chicken laid one egg. If these three chickens laid those three eggs in a matter of three days, then it follows that each chicken needs three days to lay one egg. Therefore eighteen chickens would come up with eighteen eggs in those same three days.
2. You have exactly Php 35,000.00 in a bank account that gains 2% compound interest per annum. Assuming that you neither deposit nor withdraw any money from that account, how much will the account contain after two years?I wanted to throw in at least question that implied a real-world application of a mathematical principle, and this was that question. The easy way to solve this is to just get ((35,000 x 102%) x 102%) for a total of Php 36,414.00. That said, I only realized afterwards that banks hardly use the term "compound interest" anymore, which puts up the wall between theory and practice again.
3. I need an average score of 93 among my exams in order to pass one of my courses. So far, the grades that I got in five earlier exams were 90, 97, 87, 100, and 86. What is the minimum grade that I should get on the sixth (and final) exam in order to pass?This is a reverse-average problem that is commonly known as "the Student's Dillemma", and I'm sure that a lot of people out there learned to put these calculations together at some point in their academic lives. I won't cover the answer here, as it's really just a throwback to what we were all probably doing around our final exam weeks.
4. A bicyclist travels at a steady rate of 8 kilometers per hour. She leaves her house at 2:00pm and rides her bike to the supermarket. Halfway there, she realizes that she's forgotten her shopping list and returns home to get it, then sets out for the supermarket again. She arrives there at 4:30pm. What is the distance from her house to the supermarket?I put this problem here for one basic purpose: It encourages the solver to draw a chart. I feel that visualization is an important part of logical reasoning — if you can envision the cyclist's journey in your mind, then so much the better, but if not, you can just doodle something that lets you conclude that she travelled a total of twice her original intended distance from 2:00 to 4:30. That means that she normally travels the path to the supermarket in 75 minutes at 8 km/h... which makes the distance 10 kilometers.
5. A 200-liter mixture is comprised of 20% water, 30% salt, 10% sugar, 15% sand, and 25% gold. This mixture is left out in the sun for a few hours, after which all the water is found to have evaporated. What percentage of the resulting mixture is made up of gold?And now the problems get a whole lot harder. I set up this percentage problem to illustrate the fact that percentages are non-constant values, and that they change with the introduction or removal of new factors. The easiest way to get the answer here is to realize that you're just looking for an equivalent of 25 parts out of the remaining 80 units, which makes 31.25%.
One interesting quirk about this problem was the fact that you technically don't need the volume of the original mixture to solve it. In fact, you can give the original mixture and quantity you want and the answer will still be the same... but I wasn't about to introduce that to people who had spent years away from their high school math classes.
6. A motorboat needs three hours to travel upstream, but it only needs one hour to travel downstream. When there is no current, the motorboat moves at a constant four kilometers per hour. What is the rate at which the river's current flows?This took things a little further; It's actually rather difficult to solve if you slept through most of your math classes. In fact, it's another problem that encourages you to draw... although a chart instead of a diagram is needed in this case.
Rate-Time-Distance problems like these usually need a bit of background. You need to know that Rate x Time = Distance, of course, but you also need to know that an opposing force will lower an object's effective rate of travel (and vice-versa). Ergo, the river will slow you down by its own rate when you go upstream, but it'll make you go faster by the same rate when you go downstream.
Assuming that the river's rate is R, we get:
(4 + R) x 1 = distance travelled downstream = distance travelled upstream = (4 - R) x 3
From there, it just boils down to:
(4 + R) = (4 - R) x 3
4 + R = 12 - 3R
4R = 8
R = 2 km/h
7. Three bowling balls and four frying pans weigh 54 pounds in total. Four bowling balls and one telephone weigh 54 pounds in total. Three telephones and eight frying pans also weigh 54 pounds in total. What is the total weight of one bowling ball, one frying pan, and one telephone?This is the classic three-variable problem: Three unknown quantities, and three equations. I chose the objects completely at random only because I like choosing objects completely at random.
The interesting part is that I deliberately screwed around with the numbers here — while a bowling ball weighs 12 pounds and a telephone weighs 6 pounds, a frying pan weighs 4.5 pounds. I find that some solvers normally get thrown off by the decimal value for some reason, perhaps because it makes them think that they're on the wrong track.
8. Anthony, Beatrice and Charles win the lottery on a single ticket. They decide that they will each take 30% of the total, and then set aside the remaining 10% for future needs. After the money is deposited in their bank, however, each of the three friends arrives separately to claim their share. Anthony arrives first and withdraws 30% of the money. Beatrice arrives a few hours later, and withdraws 30% of what's left. Finally, Charles arrives some time later and withdraws 30% of what's left. At this point, only Php 205,800.00 is left in the account. How much did the three friends originally win in the lottery?This is actually a problem that gets featured in a lot of puzzle books. While it's possible to solve this by means of basic algebra, the circumstances of the problem tend to leave people confused on where to start. Yes, this actually centers more on logical reasoning than percentages. Yes, I threw the two of them together to try and confuse my solvers further.
Problems like these encourage logical thinking — they force the solver to stop, think, and determine their battle plan before trying to tackle the problem. In this case, the way the logic should go is that that 205,800 represents 70% of the money that Charles saw (before he took his 30%). This amount represents 70% of the money that Beatrice originally found in the account, which is 70% of the money that Anthony found in the unblemished account. Therefore:
205,800 is 70% of the money that Charles saw...
— Charles originally saw 294,000 in the account.
294,400 is 70% of the money that Beatrice saw...
— Beatrice originally saw 420,000 in the account.
420,000 is 70% of the money that Anthony saw...
— Anthony originally saw 600,000 in the account.
*
And now I must admit that it all turned out to be for nothing, because we both ended up so busy the night before the exam that we never got around to the problems. I managed to fire off a quick question about chickens and eggs (which my friend got wrong), but we otherwise weren't able to go through the eight items above.
The next morning, my friend called to tell me that the exam was much easier than he expected, and that math only played a very small role in this regard. There were plenty of real-world logical scenarios and a few questions of general knowledge, but nothing beyond the simplified "What is 75% of 40?" percentage problems that I mentioned at the start of this article.
I suppose it's too much to ask. Math is more a tool for mental stimulation in schools, something that acts as a precursor to the logical thought that we use when we're older. You can't expect business professionals to maintain passion (much less practical use) for these theoretical concepts... especially when it comes to a post-graduate program that concentrates on cooperation and networking.
The test still sits on my desk, however, waiting for the next time that another MBA applicant asks for my assistance. On top of that, I have more word problems where that came from. It's only a matter of time before somebody asks me for another favor...
Math for an MBA, Part 1
A few days ago, someone asked me to give him a hand with the MBA entrance exam he was taking on Saturday morning. "You still remember what we learned in Math class," he told me, "and you obviously practice it a lot."
"Yeah, well... the math in an MBA course isn't
that tough. I've helped out at least one other person with his MBA homework, and it didn't go any farther than algebra and number theory. It's high school stuff."
"I don't
remember most of what we studied in high school. And it's the entrance exam... who knows what questions will come out? You know this better than I do, so give me a hand here."
I admit that I couldn't deny him the favor, and I suppose that part of me was itching to do some heavy-duty tutoring, so I said yes. Since we only had about one night's worth of time to go through the basics (us being working stiffs and all), I needed to gather my thoughts and imagine what kind of math was likely to come out in a bunch of MBA classes.
Eventually I came up with a list of eight questions for discussion, which I'll post here. I've come up with Math tests before (mostly for my siblings when they were in school), but this is the first time I've come up with a series of questions for an MBA applicant. If there was any point to this entire exercise, it lay in the matter of what was likely to come out, and what was not.
I eliminated such irritants as Calculus and Trigonometry right off the bat, for example. I felt that these were highly unlikely to come up in a Business Administration course, because they obviously require a lot of theoretical background and advanced thinking. Geometry was the next to go, because as basic as the math is, the concepts didn't apply to management principles. Probability and Combinatorics remained by the wayside as well, although those were among my favorites to explore.
After an hour's worth of thought, I had pared down my ideas into a limited set of concepts that felt as though they belonged in an MBA environment,
and were fundamental enough to appear in an entrance exam. From these, I pulled together eight questions that my friend and I could discuss, and I now post them below for your viewing pleasure:
1. Three chickens can lay three eggs in three days. In how many days can you expect 18 chickens to lay 18 eggs?
2. You have exactly Php 35,000.00 in a bank account that gains 2% compound interest per annum. Assuming that you neither deposit nor withdraw any money from that account, how much will the account contain after two years?
3. I need an average score of 93 among my exams in order to pass one of my courses. So far, the grades that I got in five earlier exams were 90, 97, 87, 100, and 86. What is the minimum grade that I should get on the sixth (and final) exam in order to pass?
4. A bicyclist travels at a steady rate of 8 kilometers per hour. She leaves her house at 2:00pm and rides her bike to the supermarket. Halfway there, she realizes that she's forgotten her shopping list and returns home to get it, then sets out for the supermarket again. She arrives there at 4:30pm. What is the distance from her house to the supermarket?
5. A 200-liter mixture is comprised of 20% water, 30% salt, 10% sugar, 15% sand, and 25% gold. This mixture is left out in the sun for a few hours, after which all the water is found to have evaporated. What percentage of the resulting mixture is made up of gold?
6. A motorboat needs three hours to travel upstream, but it only needs one hour to travel downstream. When there is no current, the motorboat moves at a constant four kilometers per hour. What is the rate at which the river's current flows?
7. Three bowling balls and four frying pans weigh 54 pounds in total. Four bowling balls and one telephone weigh 54 pounds in total. Three telephones and eight frying pans also weigh 54 pounds in total. What is the total weight of one bowling ball, one frying pan, and one telephone?
8. Anthony, Beatrice and Charles win the lottery on a single ticket. They decide that they will each take 30% of the total, and then set aside the remaining 10% for future needs. After the money is deposited in their bank, however, each of the three friends arrives separately to claim their share. Anthony arrives first and withdraws 30% of the money. Beatrice arrives a few hours later, and withdraws 30% of what's left. Finally, Charles arrives some time later and withdraws 30% of what's left. At this point, only Php 205,800.00 is left in the account. How much did the three friends originally win in the lottery?
While it would be easy for me to just put up the answers to each of these and call it a day, that wouldn't be enough for a second article on this subject. I feel that there's a specific reason why I prepared each one of these questions... and that these reasons are worthwhile to discuss.
That said, those words will have to wait till tomorrow, I think. It's almost two in the morning at this time, and in the intervening hours, you're welcome to have a crack at these. I know that it's no Sudoku, but wouldn't you be interested to see how much you remember from your high school math?
Export to Hard Drive
I spent a few minutes doing a backup of this blog a little while ago, based on
Dominique's revelation that Blogger now has an Export feature. That's not to say that I'm paranoid and constantly afraid that Big Brother is going to delete all my records one day, but I
have had a lot of words posted here for the past four or five years.
To be honest, the
Multiply site that I set up some months ago already acts as a backup — that is, whenever it's picking up my posts properly. However, I feel more comfortable knowing that there's a method that allows me to be responsible for making my own archives, as opposed to worrying about a point in time when I might lose everything.
That, and I've just realized that all of my posts since 2004, all of the code and comments and image links, comes to a mere 7.1mb on my hard drive. I feel so inadequate.
Then I mused on the fact that I have a lot of words posted here, so I opened up the XML file in a browser window, then took advantage of the clipboard in order to copy and paste the resulting mishmash into a Word document. The whole operation took me ten whole minutes at my current level of memory (and thirty more minutes because MS Word insists on annotating every single spelling and grammatical error in its documents), but I eventually got the numbers: The backup file contained about 3.6 million characters in 640,000 words. Given a conservative estimate that I wrote about 70% of those words, that puts my total so far at about 450,000 words scattered throughout this blog. I'm no slouch there, at least.
That also implies that I write an average of five or six letters per word. This is a surprise, considering my habit at wordiness.
I'm now working on exactly what kind of backup schedule and procedure I should use. I mean, I'm not sure if it's a smart move to produce archives only when I feel like doing so, not in an age where our government is debating legal standards for open reporting. Pushing a seven-megabyte file each time I post something new, however, will just eat my time in front of the modern boob tube.
Or I could just forget about my budding paranoia and just post more often. But then that would discourage me from playing with all the lovely numbers.
Ah well.
A Man's Psychology Can Be Inferred by His Choice of Street Fighter
Ryu. You are an intensely competitive person. You exercise yourself both mentally and physically before an endeavor; you don't like walking into situations unprepared. You are incapable of thinking outside of the box, and instead resort to tried-and-tested methods in order to achieve your goals. You use these methods for a reason, mainly the fact that they
work... and on top of that, you know exactly how to implement them to the best of your advantage.
Ken. As above, except that you're far more flashy and charismatic. You've got the mad skills — but some time ago, you realized that Number One happens to be a lonely place. You've played the field and are comfortable in the knowledge that you know how to deal with things... enough to go about them with a casual attitude and a sardonic smile on your face. You're really not as good as you think you are, but you're not going to lose as long as people think otherwise.
Chun-Li. You think on your feet. You're a guarded, cautious person who prepares a strategy beforehand and fully expects it to fall apart... which means that you have plenty of practice making last-minute changes. Reaction is almost instinctual in you, and life for you can be reduced to a series of moves and countermoves against the people you play with. You know when to push and you know when to wait; it's all part of the same game.
Guile. It's not about how well you do in the world, really. Instead, you feel that it's all about how you can take advantage of the opportunities that you observe. You are constantly on the lookout for openings — weak spots where you can drive your point home, or at least areas where you can push your own agenda. You're not into self-improvement as much as you are into using your strengths: If someone breaks one of your arms in a fight, you're just going to hit them with the other one. The only way people can get past you is if you
let them through.
Blanka. You like to get up close and personal; the best way to solve a problem is to throw yourself into the solution. You have a lot of scars from experiences gone wrong, and often your misadventures outnumber your achievements... but your successes are held in high enough esteem that people don't consider you a slouch. You may not be strong or smart enough to hang with the best of them the first time, but eventually you'll get there. Just expect to get a lot of pain for all your trouble.
E. Honda. People don't expect much from you, and that's where the secret lies. You like being the underdog, the person who doesn't seem to hold much promise until you snatch success out from under everybody's nose. You're not as fast as them — but you're fast enough. You're not as skilled as them — but you're skilled enough. Your plan is to let them settle into their preconceived notions for as long as possible... then pull the gloves off and show them how you really roll.
Zangief. You hit things to make them work. You don't pretend to have an understanding of the basic nature of things like all the others claim to have, and that's because you don't. Why bother gathering every bit of information you can, when you just have to know what to do? That's the way the world works: You just need to point yourself in the right direction and pull the trigger. Everything else is just an irritating buzzing noise in your ears.
Dhalsim. You like surprising people, especially when you can defy their expectations so completely. If they expect you to go left, then you go right. People are at their worst when they're extremely predictable, and that's how you discovered the wonder of creativity and random choice. No one can ever figure out exactly what you're doing until the last moment, and that's when they find out that your eye has been on the prize for a long time. They may be ready, but they certainly won't be ready for
you.
* No, this is not a serious psychological study or profile. This is a completely random article with no academic basis whatsoever, so lay off any accusations that I've favored one character over another. Street Fighter™ is the property of Capcom Co. Ltd., and I assure them that this post was written for parodical purposes (more as a curiosity than anything else). Don't sue me, or else I'll go all M. Bison on you. Psycho Crusher!
