WTF Tuesday: How did a one time Theater Major wind up as a code monkey?

We haven’t done anything for WTF Tuesday for a while, but today, we have an actual living, breathing question to respond to. Following my Close Encounters post last month, B.C. of New Hampshire asks:

How did a one time Theater Major wind up as a code monkey?

Although several of my theater colleagues went on to enormously successful careers on stage, TV and movies (and even more to modestly successful careers, and some to pretty paltry careers), the odds of making any money as an actor, let alone making a living, are still slim.

Being an aspiring actor in New York typically means:

1. waiting on tables,
2. getting your hair cut just right,
3. getting head shots taken and
4. trying to swap shifts with someone so you can rush to an audition, where you’ll find dozens (hundreds?) of other actors, just like you, waiting for hours for their moment.

In fact, restaurant-goers should check Backstage to figure out when their favorite dining spots will be short-staffed.

Away from New York, an actor’s life consists of:

1. trying to get to New York.¹

But as usual, the truth is more complicated. I started college as a Physics major, but quickly proved that theatrical cast parties are more fun than Physics labs. I drifted through Computer Science and Psychology on the way to being a full-fledged Theater major.

In Theater, unlike perhaps any other field, your whole self, body and soul, is your instrument. You must learn to master all its complexities and subtleties. You spend a lot of time on introspection … on understanding just what kind of person you are, what your capabilities and sensitivities are. You do exercises to access your inner emotional life, and to try to adapt your personality to various characters you might be called on to play.

Naturally all this self examination and soul searching leads you to understand certain things about yourself like, for example, the fact that you’re not a very good actor.

That and the making a living thing.

¹ West of the Mississippi, trying to get to L.A.

WTF Tuesday: Campaigns

Once again, it’s time for WTF Tuesday. As you know, readers can submit questions on any topic to wtf@techcurmudgeon.info, and we may eventually get around to offering some kind of response, probably not including an answer.

This week’s question is on the minds of many of our alert readers, and we’re sure one of them would have gotten around to asking us sooner or later.

Question

Trump? Really?

Answer

Now that Election 2016 is officially underway, news media are making room amidst the sports, celebrities and automobile ads for reporting about campaign escapades. It breaks up the monotony. And some of the cheapest filler available are poll results.

These polls aggregate the opinions of prospective voters who have given as much serious thought to the candidates as they have to, say, Spongebob Squarepants. In fact, polls show that if the election were held today, Spongebob would win by a wide margin. Unless, of course, he were an actual person and a candidate.

So into this media void rides Donald Trump. His appearance and his manner are wacky enough to provide entertainment. And he has enough money to keep his campaign going.

In the 1960’s, there was a computer program called ELIZA that could mimic some basic human language. One flavor of it spoofed a psychiatrist by picking words and phrases out of comments entered by the user, and turning them into probing questions about that user’s psyche. If the user entered My mother hates me, ELIZA might respond Who else in your family hates you? It was essentially a parlor trick, but effective enough to give the impression that there was some intelligence there.

In essence, this is what Trump does with Republican themes.

• Interviewer: John McCain was a POW.
• Trump: I like people who didn’t get caught.
• Interviewer: I know some Mexican immigrants.
• Trump: Mexican immigrants are drug dealers.
• Interviewer: Here’s a picture of Carly Fiorina.
• Trump: Look at that face. Would anyone vote for that?
• Interviewer: Say ‘hello’ to Megyn Kelly.
• Trump: You’re fired!

So, in short, no, not really. Enjoy the show while it lasts. President Squarepants will.

WTFism

I subscribe to the philosophy of WTF. It covers all the big questions … WTF are we? WTF are we doing here? And ultimately, WTF is the point of it all?

These questions, perhaps worded a little differently, have plagued humankind since the dawn of … uh, questions. In ancient Greece, Thales of Miletus challenged his pupils by asking ω θ φ?¹ Down through Western history, from the ancient Greeks and Latins all the way to modern peoples who don’t speak a second language, these eternal enigmas have been posed again and again. Meanwhile, in the Asian parts of the world, a Zen-like approach has lead to the simplification of these conundrums into the three primary questions: W, T and F?

The beauty of WTF is that it expresses both the questions and the attitude of response. It’s a self-contained dialectic:

You: WTF?

Me²: WTF.

Other philosophies get hung up on truth, but truth is ever-changing. There is a god. There is no god. We have free will. We have no free will. We are all alone as individuals. We are all in a sharing (and liking) community.

And while it may seem that I’m just joking around, I’m really quite serious about this. I’d like to start an organized movement espousing these beliefs but, you know, WTF?

¹ Not really the same thing, but it looks kind of cool, doesn’t it?

² Note: The roles can be reversed for diversity.