Scott Bush

It’s Thanks­giv­ing, a time for food, fam­ily, and friends. Unfor­tu­nately, Thanksgiving—or rather, the Fri­day after—has become syn­ony­mous with the start of the hol­i­day shop­ping orgy. While it’s pos­si­ble to argue the mer­its or draw­backs of hol­i­day con­sumerism, one thing is not up for debate: no sale is worth dying over.

If you don’t remem­ber Black Fri­day 2008, here’s a refresher: Jdimy­tai Damour, a 34-year-old Wal-Mart employee in New York, was tram­pled to death at about 5am by a crowd of bargain-crazed shop­pers. Unbe­liev­able. Think about that for a moment: tram­pled to death at a Wal-Mart. Keep that in mind if you’re stand­ing in line at 4am tomor­row, both for your own safety and that of those around you. It’s the sea­son for hap­pi­ness and gen­eros­ity, not greed and dis­re­gard for your fel­low man.

Be safe out there, shop­pers. As for me? I’ll be asleep until 8am, and then stay­ing as far away from the crazi­ness as pos­si­ble. And if just can’t live with­out the deals, remem­ber: you can always shop online!

Update: the fake web­site, uzinewz.com, is now high­lighted. It’s a shame that is’ not a real site; it’s the first place I’d check for infor­ma­tion about everyone’s favorite sub-machinegun.

Back in mid-2008, I offered a sim­ple quiz on “Web 2.0″ site names. As it was then, it is now (and prob­a­bly ever shall be), so I present an updated quiz. The premise is sim­ple: buried among this list of seem­ingly ran­dom col­lec­tions of let­ters and cap­i­tal­iza­tion is one ersatz web site name. That’s right… just one. The rest, ridicu­lous as they may be, are actual in-use domains (at least, they are as the time of this writ­ing; who knows how long they’ll last?). In week or so I’ll high­light the fake site. In the mean­time, sug­gest your answers in the comments.

So if you think of the “e” in “-er” words is as ves­ti­gial as a human appen­dix, you’re ready. (Go ahead and take it even if you still have your appen­dix and spell “flicker” with an “e.”)

1. a9
2. etsy
3. SCIPLEX
4. Des­ig­natr
5. utterli
6. Gig­dom
7. Noon­hat
8. investo­biz
9. Stat­nip
10. fcuk­star
11. uoOo
12. uzinewz
13. goowy
14. kijiji
15. sedo
16. ZooLoo
17. zumobi
18. Lilpip

There you have it: 17 real—though strange—domain names in the “Web 2.0″ style, pre­sented in no par­tic­u­lar order. Oh, and don’t for­get the one fake one. Can you spot it with­out resort­ing to your web browser for confirmation?

Every­one should com­mand an army of min­ions to do their evil bid­ding. Most never bother to amass their min­ions but I’m well on my way. In addi­tion to the two I’ve already bent to my will, I’m actively work­ing on two new ones. Soon my army will rise up and take over the world! I should prob­a­bly men­tion at this point that my “army” con­sists of high school seniors and instead of hav­ing them carry out my “evil bid­ding,” I’m really just men­tor­ing their senior projects. But it sure sounds bet­ter that way, doesn’t it?

Seri­ously, though, I am men­tor­ing two Mount­lake Ter­race High School seniors this year, as I have in years past. It’s really quite an honor to be asked to help guide these stu­dents. Both are devel­op­ing web sites, which is some­thing I know a bit about. They work on their projects for most of the aca­d­e­mic year and present them to a panel of their peers, teach­ers, and com­mu­nity mem­bers come May.

I thought I’d men­tion the projects here and update this post as devel­op­ments occur. For privacy’s sake, I won’t men­tion the stu­dents I’m men­tor­ing by name; let’s call them stu­dents 1 and 2 (orig­i­nal, huh?).

1. The Hawk­eye (thehawkeye.org) — Stu­dent 1 is re-developing Mount­lake Ter­race High School’s award-winning stu­dent news­pa­per, The Hawk­eye. They’ve had a site for a few years but instead of becom­ing an active hub for news, it’s been more of a repos­i­tory of PDF copies of older issues and web posts of arti­cles already printed in the paper. Stu­dent 1 intends to change this by insti­tut­ing required online-only con­tent from writ­ers and dis­trib­ut­ing edi­to­r­ial con­trol through WordPress’s built-in roles. Of course, there’s also a design com­po­nent with this project: find­ing and cus­tomiz­ing a WP theme suit­able for an online newspaper.
2. MLT Food bank web­site (TBA) — Stu­dent 2’s project is to cre­ate a web­site for Mount­lake Terrace’s food bank. Cur­rently they have no web pres­ence, so this will be a step in the right direc­tion. He plans to post mostly brochure-style con­tent (loca­tion, hours, mis­sion state­ment, etc.) though I’m encour­ag­ing him to incor­po­rate addi­tional infor­ma­tion to “human­ize” the food bank. For exam­ple, quotes or sto­ries from peo­ple the food bank has helped; per­haps with pho­tos. As this is a new site, I’m guid­ing him through the process of choos­ing and reg­is­ter­ing a domain name, select­ing a host­ing com­pany, and rec­om­mend­ing Word­Press as his devel­op­ment plat­form. WP offers the added ben­e­fit of allow­ing the food bank to man­age its own con­tent after the project is complete.

Men­tor­ing is an art that is more com­pli­cated than it first seems. It’s about find­ing the proper bal­ance between telling and rec­om­mend­ing, doing and sug­gest­ing. My main cri­te­ria for suc­cess are pretty sim­ple. First, that the project gets done; sec­ond, that the stu­dent learned more with my help than they would have oth­er­wise; and finally: that they don’t hate me when it’s over. Should be doable… except maybe that last one. After all, I am try­ing to build an army of min­ions and what good evil over­lord isn’t secretly despised by his underlings?

Lan­guage is a beau­ti­ful and var­ied con­cept, with room enough for all man­ner of style, voice, and of course, word choice. As one who often edits the writ­ing of oth­ers (or wishes he’d had the oppor­tu­nity to do so), I’ve encoun­tered some word choices that seem to per­sist despite sim­pler, more direct options. One of these is the word “uti­lize,” which in the vast major­ity of cases should have sim­ply been “use.”

What’s the big deal? There isn’t one, unless you also care about abom­i­na­tions like “drownd,” “irre­gard­less,” or “new and improved.” Oh, or if you’re look­ing to min­i­mize char­ac­ter counts in your tweets or texts: “use” rep­re­sents a 50% reduc­tion in let­ters! To be fair, though, peo­ple would prob­a­bly just write “UZ” instead.

(more…)

Once when I was a teenager, a friend offered to let me read a man­u­script writ­ten by his dad’s friend. “Oooh, cool—a real man­u­script!” I thought. The word man­u­script was ripe with pos­si­bil­ity of pub­lish­ing and fame and to read one con­ferred upon the reader a priv­i­lege, a ticket to the insider’s club.  So I was excited when my friend handed me a three-ring binder stuffed with pages filled with double-spaced Courier text. “This is the real deal!” I thought, and dove in that night. Just one prob­lem: it sucked. Turned out there was a rea­son why the author was let­ting anyone—including the teenaged friends of his friend’s son—read the thing: it was doubt­ful any­one else ever would.

Jacket design for “Redemption”

About a year ago, a friend asked if I’d read and edit his brother’s man­u­script. I was hon­ored and intrigued, but mem­o­ries of my first man­u­script expe­ri­ence almost stopped me from agree­ing. I’m sure glad I did, because Darin Rice’s The Redemp­tion of Kurt Cobain restored the cool fac­tor in read­ing man­u­scripts. This is one story that should see the light of day (and not just due to its excel­lent first-round editing).

The story is an intrigu­ing one that defies cat­e­go­riza­tion. One way to frame it is by what it’s not: a biog­ra­phy of Kurt Cobain. The for­mer NIr­vana lead singer plays a cen­tral role in the story, yet is never actu­ally named, other than the title. Sounds weird, but it makes per­fect sense in the story’s con­text because it takes place after Cobain com­mits sui­cide. Now you’re intrigued, aren’t you? You should be. The plot weaves strands of pol­i­tics, phi­los­o­phy, sus­tain­abil­ity, par­ent­ing, a bit of humor, and of course rock and roll into a sur­pris­ingly read­able fab­ric. It’s clear that Rice knows a thing or six about music, which is evi­denced by thought­ful selec­tions of pop­u­lar song lyrics that begin each chap­ter. I found it enter­tain­ing to return to the open­ing lyri­cal pas­sage after read­ing the chap­ter to see how his choice fore­shad­owed what would occur in those pages.

Per­haps another way to intro­duce the story is to cite a bit from Rice’s own summary:

The Redemp­tion of Kurt Cobain is decid­edly polit­i­cal, unde­ni­ably rock and roll, and at its heart about the bond between fathers and daugh­ters. Set in Wash­ing­ton State and Wash­ing­ton DC in the months pre­ced­ing a mod­ern pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, Redemp­tion sets the stage to both ask and answer: “If Cobain had another chance at life, would he take it? Could this rock icon, armed with wis­dom from the after­world, find a way back to Earth to trans­form not only him­self but our nation?

Inspired by the epic plot and con­ver­gent char­ac­ters of The Stand and the oth­er­worldly con­tem­pla­tion of The Lovely Bones, Redemp­tion is unique and unex­pected.  A con­tem­po­rary mar­riage of physics, phi­los­o­phy, music and mat­ter, it embraces the notion of spir­its in search of another Earthly chance.  As human frail­ties are exposed and con­fronted within the back­drop of a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, Redemp­tion builds sus­pense and com­bines lit­er­ary and com­mer­cial ele­ments as it taps the pow­er­ful and often hid­den cit­i­zen activist and rock star in all of us.

Even the author’s own descrip­tion doesn’t fully cap­ture the essence of the story; that’s a tes­ta­ment to the unique­ness of the sub­ject mat­ter. The best way I can rec­om­mend it is this: read­ing it on the bus to and from work, I never fell asleep. That may not sound like high praise, but I fall asleep on the bus read­ing every­thing, so it means a lot that I couldn’t wait to find out what was going to hap­pen next.

Rice is decid­ing how best to pro­ceed with the work: shop­ping for an agent, dis­cussing the intri­ca­cies of get­ting approval for the use of each chapter’s lyri­cal pas­sage, oh and the small mat­ter of titling a novel after a famous rock star in our liti­gious soci­ety. I can safely say that the book stands on its own with­out those pas­sages or Cobain’s name in its title although both do bring an ele­ment of real­ism to the work. But the asso­ci­a­tion with Cobain is a double-edged sword. On one hand, his instantly-recognizable name could help bring atten­tion to the work. On the other hand, if you aren’t a fan of grunge music in gen­eral or Cobain specif­i­cally, you might not bother pick­ing it up off the shelf at all. And it bears repeat­ing here that while the story uses Cobain’s (after)life as a frame­work, it has so much more to offer than the name alone implies. And therein lies part of the prob­lem find­ing a pub­lisher for the book: it’s a genre-bender. Is it a ghost story? Sorta. A polit­i­cal thriller? Oh yes (one of the main char­ac­ters is a sen­a­tor run­ning for the Pres­i­dency), but not in the typ­i­cal way. Music biog­ra­phy? Mmmm yeah, if you read between the lines a bit. A self-help book on good par­ent­ing? Uh… not really but it’s got a lit­tle of that, too. You see the prob­lem, if an excel­lent story that defies label­ing is truly a “problem.”

If this intro­duc­tion has piqued your inter­est, you can check out a bit more at Rice’s Face­book page for the work. And I will post here again when it’s published.

Edit­ing this man­u­script has taught me one thing for sure, though. If Darin Rice wants me to read another of his man­u­scripts, the answer is “yes.” Well, unless it comes in a three-ring binder.