2015, An Annotated Year in Scott: August

August was a frightening month.  The release of Metal Gear Solid V was fast approaching, as was the beginning of a new school year, and with those things the day we would have to tell everybody about our impending child.  I tried to distract myself as best I could.



I was a late fan to the Metal Gear series, and this was the first game I was able to experience along with everyone else when it was released.  Pre-ordering it was a very exciting moment for me (especially since I generally refuse to pre-order things!)  Having finished the game and then some, I can tell you that the answer is a resounding "yes".  We are still here just to suffer.



I had been a tremendous fan of Jon Bois for months, but August was the time his writing became commonly characterized by something other than wry sports humor, and that was when I started posting his articles on Facebook.  I found this one especially resonant, as it both explained to me what the heck selfie sticks are about, and taught me how to be a nicer person in general.  I really admire the common sense, decency, and humanity that went into this piece, and you should too.



Every time I walk past those bottles of fresh-squeezed juice (which have since gone up to $10), I think of my friend Vinny and his terrible decision.  This is not cruel -- contrary to what he would have you believe, he makes very few poor decisions.  Seeing his cost-benefit analysis engine of a brain let him down was a tiny victory for those of us with less efficient hardware everywhere.



This one kind of blew up.  Multiple people, some of whom have taught Actual College Classes, and others who just Got Opinions, joined in to share their perspectives.  In the end, I think I got a little carried away (just a little), and set myself up for a couple of discussions that centered on ideas I hadn't really meant to promote.  But I truly believe there are better ways to get people to write well (regardless of context) than rotely reminding them of these nebulous, inconsistent rules.  Some people hear my assault on that attitude and start sweating as they recall the horribly written papers they've had to parse.  If you need to force someone to follow a list of specific rules that they don't understand already to be elements of the language they're writing in, just to be able to read something they've written, then you've already failed to get them to express themselves in any kind of meaningful way.  You have taken away their ability to express themselves at all, and if you can't understand them otherwise, then they need to go back to language classes, not hear a tirade against preposition location.  It's not perfect -- professors are going to be asked to teach students where there is a language barrier, and just deal with it -- but transforming their papers into a fill-in-the-blank isn't much good, either.



To this day, this was the dumbest technical request I've ever heard.  I had to explain to her what Braille is, and how it works, and how blind people use computers, and why this was totally pointless.  She did have the grace to be embarrassed, and gave me a bottle of wine for Christmas.



I laugh every time I watch this commercial.  I hope you will, too.