Advanced Storytelling

I'm realizing my dream. Sigh. I got another job assignment, writing a report on a membership survey for the Independent Public Relations Society of America. Not interesting in itself, but I get to use a web app called Survey Monkey . You can't be unhappy when you're working with a Survey Monkey. Unless your initials are P.H. Um... so life is boring right now. I've been sucked into Facebook and Second Life , both of which I haven't quite found the potential in so far. There's a little bit of a Second Life "tipping point" frenzy going on here at SOC. I kinda feel left out around here, not giving a crap about internet advocacy.

"The message is only as good as the policies behind it." -Daniel Schulman, "Mind Games" in the May/June 2006 Columbia Journalism Review

All the H.U. graduates in the audience (hello? anyone?) know to which theater professor I'm referring to above. I've now found a man that puts his verbal stutter to shame. I now have a professor that says "okayyy?" at the end of EVERY SENTENCE. In an unspecified Eastern European accent. Also? "Relatability" does NOT mean "related to." Someone tell the class. (Yes, I am being a bad student and emailing during class. Ahh, wireless campus.)

But still without internet access, so my nights at home are spent watching cable tv instead of communicating with the outside world. I've just finished reading an article by Hugh Rank , a professor who's developed a cool little tool for teaching people how to analyze media. Just the schema "Intensify/Downplay." Ask yourself, what is the ad/speech/article hyping up? What is it omitting? His website's got a lot of other tools on it, especially to help kids understand advertising. Oddly enough, reading this I thought of two things: Pedagogy of the Opressed and D.A.R.E. Say what you will about D.A.R.E.- I went through it (and won a teddy bear in a D.A.R.E. t-shirt for an essay I wrote), and the one thing I took out of it was what they taught us about ways of persuasion. I remember posters with cartoons depicting "get on the bandwagon" and "sex appeal" and the others. Now that I think about it, it was probably a pretty formative moment. As for Ped...

Last night I was sitting in my cave, watching The Colbert Report (which I like much more than I thought I would), and the guest was "a linguist who..." I was about to shout "George!" (Funny how comfortable I feel refering to George Lakoff as "George." He's like a big, progressive grandpa teddy bear), but no, it was a guy named Geoffrey Numberg. He's written a book called Talking RIght . I just bought it, along with Lakoff's new book, and Mary Pipher's Writing to Change the World. If I can managed to get to any of them, I'll post what I think about them. Right now I'm deep into week three of grad school.

You want to know how I know this? I'm calling this photo "Dinner Parties Are Not An Option": This contraption is a stove/sink/fridge combo. Yes, my stove is also my sink is also my fridge. This is the luxury for which I pay $1000 a month. Doesn't it just scream "efficiency basement apartment"? No? How about this: This is my bathroom. Or my laundry room. I don't really know what to call it. I took this picture standing in the kitchen (which, by the way, also has a very big table and pantry). Yes, that's my shower. The green door is the toilet. The sink? Is the laundry basin. Brushing my teeth in the morning is quite interesting. Stay tuned for the day I accidentally reach for the laundry detergent instead of my soap. Actually, in some ways this apartment kinda rocks. On a temporary basis.

I read diaries like this and their comments on DailyKos, and it gets frustrating. It's another post among many, trying to articulate, for once and for all, The Democratic Values. As if someday soon, we'll suddenly have the right wording (the clouds will part, the sun will shine, and angels will sing), and our elected officials will start talking perfectly articulated values. We HAVE values and vision-stop trying to get it perfect and start talking. Somewhere out there, Frank Luntz (KUMQUAAAAATTTTT!) is laughing. Every time we write or complain about not having a message, one of his right-wing pundit gets his (or her) wings. Don't get me wrong: this work is important- I'm dedicating my life to it- but the more time we spend brainstorming new lists of values over and over, instead of getting out there, the more time he has to just sit back and relax. Everytime someone can point to a diary like this and say, "see, even the Democrats don't think they have anythin...