Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Giant Cinderella

There's currently an epic battle between my rational adult self and my inner child who loved the rags-to-riches story of Cinderella and all things sparkly/delicate/glass.

First, the story:

This is an actual building recently completed in Budai township on the coast of Taiwan.
   Aside from being a 55 foot tall x 36 foot wide stiletto high heel...
   Aside from being a shiny homage to the structural triangle....
   Aside from reminding me of that episode of the Brady Bunch where Mr. Brady was supposed to design the factory headquarters for a cosmetics company in the shape of a lipstick...
   Aside from being a conspicuously expensive Sex In the City icon in the middle of an impoverished region...
   Aside from all that, apparently it is a church.

Not merely a church, but a church specifically intended to attract women to visit.
Not visit to worship (since it won't even offer regular church services), but visit to throw fancy weddings and serve as a "blissful, romantic avenue" for photo shoots. They serve tea and cakes inside.
----------------------------
Now, the internal battle between my thoughts:
A. It's like a freak tornado picked up a piece of Disneyland and dropped it off on a random beach in Taiwan. I can practically picture 200 little girls still packed inside that giant shoe shortly after the tornado touched down, wearing their Frozen costumes, wondering why the building was shaking, why the view out the window doesn't look like 'Merica anymore, and impatiently asking their parents when the Disney Princesses are going to show up to take selfies with them.

B. Ooooooh. Preeettty.  Clean lines. Great light.

C. Ewwwwww. Tacky.  Giant shoe. Giant freaking shoe.

D. It's a bit patronizingly on-the-nose, isn't it? Building a shiny glass slipper as a way to lure women to visit? Don't bother trying to draw us in with ideas, roads to personal growth, a sense of community, or a chance to be involved in something greater than ourselves. Just build us a sparkly shoe, and we'll show up in mindless droves, compelled by the Uterine Gods to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Highest High Heel.
Pilgims, all.
E. I have a deep and difficult-to-articulate objection to claiming this structure is a church. There appears to be nothing to worship there, except vanity and money.

In the name of the Dollar, the Yen, and the Holy Gulden: Amen.
F. The "blissful, romantic" building was apparently inspired by a love story. *swoon*
   ...except that it's more of a tragic horror story. According to local history, there was a girl who was hoping to get married but instead she developed Blackfoot Disease. Basically, the arsenic content in the local artesian wells was so high that it caused the arteries in her legs to shrivel up and stop flowing, so both her legs turned black and necrotic and had to be amputated. Poisoned by insoluble heavy metals, immobilized, and abandoned by any romantic prospects, instead of getting married she spent the rest of her life single, dependent, and living in a church.  NOT SWOON. What insensitive cad came up with this idea of building a DisneySparkleCommercialWeddingChapel in reference to her memory?
No. Seriously.
Epidemic heavy metal toxicity is a
reason to launch a public health campaign,
not a reason to build a Chapel O' Love.
G. This is a very expensive building ($680k) in a fairly poor region, whose stated purpose is to inspire women to dress up and come to lavish wedding parties. Will that be a source of inspiration? I do remember growing up without much money, catching glimpses of lovely inspiring things, and dreaming that someday I'd find a way to go visit beautiful places like this. Or will it be a source of social pressure luring impoverished people to go into debt buying things they don't need and can't afford?
"Sweetheart, if you'd go ahead and spend
$1.36 million for a giant pair of those pretty glass slippers,
you just might live happily ever after."
H. Other.


 

Friday, January 22, 2016

Big flavors, Big world




Walking into this little spice shop down near the Seattle waterfront is like stepping through a door to the entire world. So many colors and smells and flavors! So many things I've never heard of from places I've never been! It's a reminder that Earth is big and full of curiosities, and that there is so much left to see and do.

...Apparently, it's also the place to find Bilbo Baggins' long-lost brother:

Sunday, January 17, 2016

Thank You vs Sorry


Last week, I saw this comic by New York City-based illustrator Yao Xiao and started trying it out the next day. It's already been a game-changer for me. I've been amazed by how many times a day the 'Thanks vs Sorry' decision comes up, and how much more positive the encounter feels when I say that I appreciate someone's (fill in positive behavior) rather than saying I'm sorry for my own (perceived personal shortcoming).
 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 



This is not to imply we should never say sorry. Sometimes, there is actual wrongdoing, fault, guilt, and the legitimate need to repair it with a sincere apology.
However, for me it's been surprising to realize that many of the times when I say sorry, I'm actually apologizing for situations beyond my control as though the personal guilt for them should belong to me anyway. Even more of a revelation has been seeing how thanking someone for understanding puts the whole encounter on different footing.

Instead of  "Sorry to bother you,"
there's "Thank you for being available to help out."

Instead of "Sorry I'm doing this so slowly,"
there's "Thanks for letting me take the time to do this right."

Instead of "Sorry I'm so clueless about this,"
there's "Thank you for teaching me more about it."

Instead of "Sorry this blog is lame,"
there's "Thanks for reading!"

Saturday, January 9, 2016

A thinkin' or a cussin'...

I'm not a person who uses many swear words.
There's room for a few colorful exclamations, like
  "Sweet fancy Moses!" 
  or "Great googly moogly!"
  or a good hearty "Holy shmoley!"
  or my dad's personal favorite "Diddly-dip-dee-dang-dang!"
  or my mom's colorful "Hell's bells!" with all its redneck splendor.
  or this:


But beyond that, I'm pretty much tapped out. I've made an effort to keep it that way (...although admittedly the track record on that definitely isn't spotless). Who needs to rack up more bad words when there are so many other splendid options to use instead?

Enter, stage left, a recent study published in the journal Language Sciences which concluded that people who know more swear words may also have a larger non-swear vocabulary.

The researchers asked people to say as many swear words as they could come up with in 60 seconds. Then, they asked them to name as many animals as possible in 60 seconds. People who were able to spit out more bad words were also able to rattle off more animals. The researchers concluded that "The ability to generate taboo language is not an index of overall language poverty. A voluminous taboo lexicon may better be considered an indicator of healthy verbal abilities.”

So, being able to swear like a sailor goes hand in hand with having a wider overall vocabulary and better verbal skills?  Really?

I have some issues with the study:

1. They allowed anything that sounded remotely foul to count toward the swear word vocabulary size, as long as it was generally recognizable as being in the English language. Somehow that feels like cheating. Remember the data showing that several rappers have a vocabulary larger than William Shakespeare, but for the sake of word total they allowed things like "pimp, pimps, pimping, and pimpin" to count as 4 separate entries? This study's counting method feels similarly skewed in favor of sloppy creativity rather than solid real words.


2. Since when are animal names the prime litmus test for vocabulary size? What if my specialty is naming architectural styles, or streets in Phoenix, or types of trees, and despite having a broad vocabulary it doesn't happen to run very deeply into zoology?
Sharkstallion, the Great White Hork.
3. They tested in a setting with time pressure. This is the biggest issue of all, actually. Have you ever noticed that there are some people who can unleash an unchecked torrent of words about whatever crosses their mind, while other people have to pause and collect their words into an organized bundle before they speak? Maybe that has nothing to do with the content of their brains, and everything to do with the filter system they pass their words through before saying them out loud.
    I wonder if the unfiltered folks have an easier time popping out words (swear words or animal names or anything else) rapid-fire during a timed test, because they just spit out whatever comes to mind.  Meanwhile, perhaps the people with a filter go slower because they're trying to produce a sensible, meaningful, organized, efficient list.    
Because for some people, rattling off a random list like
"Baboon...Goldfish...Hyena...Tree frog...Orca...Dungbeetle"
feels just as psychotically disorganized as eating a KitKat like this. 
In other words, the time-pressured test would favor people who can comfortably just blurt stuff out. Regardless of true vocabulary size or "healthy verbal abilities," the filtered thinkers would be at a disadvantage.
I think they should demand a  #$@&  retest.