So. Umm, here we are. And here’s today’s disclaimer, right off the top (written, ironically, as a post-script after I resignedly realized that yet again, the best-laid plans of mice and men go oft awry, as Robbie Burns saith): I fully intended to pick up exactly where my last post was supposed to go before it took a sudden turn and veered off on a tangent. (Which I so rarely do. Just ask my students. Well… on second thought, don’t, because I have a pretty good hunch what they’d say regarding the Old Man and his tangents. If they even know what the word means. Don’t laugh: some of them think an angle is a heavenly being. Oh, the humanity.)
But…
(Speaking of tangents, ‘but’ is such a wonderfully, dramatically, ominous word, don’t you think? That starkly simple three-letter word, especially when followed by the mutely elegant ellipsis (otherwise known to the ignorant and vulgar as the ‘dot-dot-dot’) which didn’t originally mean an expressive silence, a trailing off implying more to come, but which now does…)
Sorry. What I was going to say before rhapsodizing about a single word was: …but the Muse had other ideas. And I didn’t dare offend her. Because, to paraphrase an old saying, when the Muse ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy. When she shows up and you say you’d like to write about such and such today, and she gets that polite but long-suffering look on her face… it means, ‘if you know what’s good for you, you won’t even try, because this is what I’ve got for you instead and you damned well better use it, buster’ --- well, you just go with whatever she says. So that post on Dune’s characters will have to wait for another week. As long as the Muse doesn’t drop by and have a different idea when next I sit down at my trusty Dell Inspiron to (metaphorically) pen another epistle.
(Which leads me on another --- slightly longer --- tangent about the supreme need/value to stay flexible when writing --- regardless of whether we’re talking about blog posts or sonnets or the latest addition to one’s magnum opus work-in-progress. If the topic you decided to write on today just isn’t working out for you, then go with what is. A different episode in the plot. Some character background. Descriptive writing about setting. Whatever. As long as what’s working for you is not staring mindlessly at cat videos on social media for seven hours. I don’t imagine the Muse would be very impressed with that, either, and never mind the moon being a harsh mistress; the moon’s got nothing on the Muse when she’s crossed.)
Anyway. Let me start (!) by saying it’s all Microsoft’s fault, to wit:
Yesterday, Microsoft did some weird update-that-wasn’t-quite-an-update --- in stealth mode. Anybody notice this beside me? (And now the damned Word icon looks different, too!) My first clue was when their cheery little message about changes to privacy policy popped up on my screen while I was doing something totally unrelated to Word specifically, or even Microsoft in general. Which I suppose wasn’t technically stealthy on their part, but… they’d already made their changes and were letting me know after the fact. Which I hate and which, as far as I’m concerned, is stealth mode. They probably send the notice only because they’re required to, and they bank on nearly everyone ignoring it or just shrugging, the way most people simply click the ‘I have read and accept’ box at the conclusion of those lengthy and incomprehensible Terms of Service Agreements on any new piece of software without really having read them. But the difference between me and most of the population was that I actually took time to read this notice. Oh. My. Gosh. They wanted --- no, no, no, intended --- to use my data, my writing --- my very words --- for just about everything except the kitchen sink. Just sign here, please, preferably in blood, I could almost hear them cackling, rather like Macbeth’s witches. Oh, wait! Actually, you don’t even need to sign, because we’ve already made those changes and are rather hoping you’re too lazy to notice! Bwahahaha! In response, I’m reminded of Philip Henslowe’s line from Shakespeare in Love: ‘Oh! Cut out my heart! Throw my liver to the dogs!’ The nerve. Seriously? Not bloody likely, you cheeky, greedy bastards, I thought grimly, and proceeded to the innocently named ‘Manage My Account’ tab --- which I think strikingly resembles another Macbeth reference… you know, the one in which Lady M tells her husband to ‘look like th’ innocent flower, but be th’ serpent under’t’ --- where I unchecked every permission I could locate related to allowing them to pillage my data. Take that! Biff! Kapow!
I guess the underlying message is, in this day and age, if you value privacy, whether digital or analog or both, you’ve got to be aggressive in protecting yours. (I already knew that, but yesterday was a good reminder.) Because, in a society where information is the new gold mine for corporations, they’re not interested in safeguarding your privacy. Quite the contrary, in fact. I used the word ‘pillage’ a minute ago, and I think it’s an apt descriptor of what companies want to do with your information. Microsoft, Apple, Amazon --- all the Buy ‘N Large type companies, in fact (today’s Wall-E reference) --- are, almost literally, barbarian hordes battering your digital gates. And you need to be the forces of civilization determined to fend them off. It’s not just companies, either. An article on my newsfeed today discussed a lawyer whose laptop and phone were seized by border agents after he refused to provide the passwords… when the agents couldn’t express reasonable grounds why they wanted a peek in the first place.
So guard your privacy, peeps. Don’t allow it to slip away through apathy, neglect or convenience.
And by the way… tell Alexa, Siri, and Cortana to mind their own damned business, too.
(‘By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes!’)
But…
(Speaking of tangents, ‘but’ is such a wonderfully, dramatically, ominous word, don’t you think? That starkly simple three-letter word, especially when followed by the mutely elegant ellipsis (otherwise known to the ignorant and vulgar as the ‘dot-dot-dot’) which didn’t originally mean an expressive silence, a trailing off implying more to come, but which now does…)
Sorry. What I was going to say before rhapsodizing about a single word was: …but the Muse had other ideas. And I didn’t dare offend her. Because, to paraphrase an old saying, when the Muse ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy. When she shows up and you say you’d like to write about such and such today, and she gets that polite but long-suffering look on her face… it means, ‘if you know what’s good for you, you won’t even try, because this is what I’ve got for you instead and you damned well better use it, buster’ --- well, you just go with whatever she says. So that post on Dune’s characters will have to wait for another week. As long as the Muse doesn’t drop by and have a different idea when next I sit down at my trusty Dell Inspiron to (metaphorically) pen another epistle.
(Which leads me on another --- slightly longer --- tangent about the supreme need/value to stay flexible when writing --- regardless of whether we’re talking about blog posts or sonnets or the latest addition to one’s magnum opus work-in-progress. If the topic you decided to write on today just isn’t working out for you, then go with what is. A different episode in the plot. Some character background. Descriptive writing about setting. Whatever. As long as what’s working for you is not staring mindlessly at cat videos on social media for seven hours. I don’t imagine the Muse would be very impressed with that, either, and never mind the moon being a harsh mistress; the moon’s got nothing on the Muse when she’s crossed.)
Anyway. Let me start (!) by saying it’s all Microsoft’s fault, to wit:
Yesterday, Microsoft did some weird update-that-wasn’t-quite-an-update --- in stealth mode. Anybody notice this beside me? (And now the damned Word icon looks different, too!) My first clue was when their cheery little message about changes to privacy policy popped up on my screen while I was doing something totally unrelated to Word specifically, or even Microsoft in general. Which I suppose wasn’t technically stealthy on their part, but… they’d already made their changes and were letting me know after the fact. Which I hate and which, as far as I’m concerned, is stealth mode. They probably send the notice only because they’re required to, and they bank on nearly everyone ignoring it or just shrugging, the way most people simply click the ‘I have read and accept’ box at the conclusion of those lengthy and incomprehensible Terms of Service Agreements on any new piece of software without really having read them. But the difference between me and most of the population was that I actually took time to read this notice. Oh. My. Gosh. They wanted --- no, no, no, intended --- to use my data, my writing --- my very words --- for just about everything except the kitchen sink. Just sign here, please, preferably in blood, I could almost hear them cackling, rather like Macbeth’s witches. Oh, wait! Actually, you don’t even need to sign, because we’ve already made those changes and are rather hoping you’re too lazy to notice! Bwahahaha! In response, I’m reminded of Philip Henslowe’s line from Shakespeare in Love: ‘Oh! Cut out my heart! Throw my liver to the dogs!’ The nerve. Seriously? Not bloody likely, you cheeky, greedy bastards, I thought grimly, and proceeded to the innocently named ‘Manage My Account’ tab --- which I think strikingly resembles another Macbeth reference… you know, the one in which Lady M tells her husband to ‘look like th’ innocent flower, but be th’ serpent under’t’ --- where I unchecked every permission I could locate related to allowing them to pillage my data. Take that! Biff! Kapow!
I guess the underlying message is, in this day and age, if you value privacy, whether digital or analog or both, you’ve got to be aggressive in protecting yours. (I already knew that, but yesterday was a good reminder.) Because, in a society where information is the new gold mine for corporations, they’re not interested in safeguarding your privacy. Quite the contrary, in fact. I used the word ‘pillage’ a minute ago, and I think it’s an apt descriptor of what companies want to do with your information. Microsoft, Apple, Amazon --- all the Buy ‘N Large type companies, in fact (today’s Wall-E reference) --- are, almost literally, barbarian hordes battering your digital gates. And you need to be the forces of civilization determined to fend them off. It’s not just companies, either. An article on my newsfeed today discussed a lawyer whose laptop and phone were seized by border agents after he refused to provide the passwords… when the agents couldn’t express reasonable grounds why they wanted a peek in the first place.
So guard your privacy, peeps. Don’t allow it to slip away through apathy, neglect or convenience.
And by the way… tell Alexa, Siri, and Cortana to mind their own damned business, too.
(‘By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes!’)
RSS Feed