2004-08-24
Very Creepy! Ok, Maybe Not Creepy, But A Bit Strange At Least�
hearing: Never Leave � Kendall Payne
reading: The Fellowship Of The Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
feeling: sarcastic
(no one's going to notice...right?)
My brother had his birthday on Saturday. Birthdays, mean birthday cards for him in the mail.
Birthday cards from a dozen times removed relatives we�ve never met before in our lives.
Yes, you heard that right. These people only started sending cards this year. They were building and researching their family tree, and we have some strange, remote family ties by marriage.
Although total strangers, being relatives by an obscure relation, they felt entitled to our home address and every scrap of detail about our family tree.
They acquired our address (through the wonder of the internet of course), but we didn�t contribute to the family tree. We�re only related to them by far-fetched marriage bonds. They hardly need the rest of our family�s information.
Well they brushed that off, and having our address, they decided they�d be extremely generous, and make us cheap, generic birthday cards on their computer, which stated our age. They need to remind themselves of how old we are, so they remind us.
But of course they can�t just send us an empty birthday card. They�ll include a gift.
Pictures of their two kids. Aged�uhm�3 and 1?
Seriously.
They plaster a huge picture of their kids on the left inside face of the card, and include one or two more. And they�re even considerate enough to send brand new pictures every time.
Why? Why do we care to have pictures of their kids in our birthday cards? What is the purpose in this? To me, it seems terribly arrogant, pretentious, and vain. It just doesn�t seem like proper etiquette to me to send pictures of your children in birthday cards for other children.
Now don�t get me wrong, pictures in birthday cards can be acceptable. A girl sundered from her sweetheart might send him a picture of herself in his birthday card knowing how much that would mean to him. It�s even passable to send pictures of grandchildren to grandparents, and children to parents.
BUT total strangers, sending bevies of photos of their children, to other children far older than them� that just seems a little weird don�t ya think?
If they sent us pictures in Christmas/Easter/Fourth Of July/any general commercialized holiday cards, that would be plausible. Although Fourth of July cards with pictures of children would be somewhat conceited and strange. It�s still more passable than individual cards to children who care nothing about their children. I mean, if we knew them it might be all right. But the point is, we don�t. It�s not that we care only for ourselves, it�s that we don�t have any remarkable fondness for strangers� Having pictures of those kids is like having someone stick the random photo fillers from picture frames in your birthday card. It�s weird.
I wonder if they expect us to do the same thing? Send them birthday cards with pictures of us in them that is�
I�ll give some leeway though. Maybe these people aren�t vain of their children. Maybe they�re just a little abnormal�choosing to push the boundaries of social propriety�
In that case I�d tell them to go find a cause. Lobby for gay marriages or something. That would be far more productive than sending strangers pictures of their kids.
I was cruising tabulas� diaries out of sheer boredom last night, and came across this site.
Supposedly, it works on an algorithm (which I cannot find a working link to read about and I�m too lazy to cruise the web for it) which knows how to classify certain common words as feminine or masculine and then counts and scores their frequency to determine the gender of the author of a block of text.
I gave it a shot. Why not? I tested a small handful of my entries, and came out as female every time. Way cool. I actually write like the girl that I am!
So then I thought I�d grab entries from a male friend�s diary to test the game further. Billy�s diary presented itself to me (I figured you wouldn�t mind�haha) and out of the thirteen entries I randomly choose and fed through, only six came out male. And several of those were just barely male�we were looking at a 3 or 4 word count difference between male and female.
So Billy, I guess you write like a girl�
I�d like to grab blocks of text from some famous authors, specifically male authors, and see what comes of it, because I have a couple theories formulating, and although I wouldn�t build a scientific report on data gained from this generator, it would be an interesting side project.
The simplified algorithm they used for this, rates words as masculine or feminine. The automatic assumption is to equate masculine with male, and feminine with female. A male will employ primarily masculine words, and a female, feminine.
But I don�t think that�s necessarily true. Something being masculine is not necessarily to be male, and being feminine is not necessarily to be female. Masculinity and femininity are purer than that, and masculine traits may be bestowed upon a female, and vice versa.
I speculate that the qualities of a sensitive, thoughtful, intuitive writer would turn out, mostly feminine.
Every entry of Billy�s, which I fed through and had turned out female, was a thoughtful, reflective entry. The ones that turned out male were the day log entries.
Point proved already.
Sensitivity and thoughtfulness are conveyed through feminine words�
Although my dayloggish entries turned out female. I guess I�m just sensitive and thoughtful with my writing all the time�
That�s why I want to try famous male authors though�I consider myself something of a writer, and I think that good novel writers, especially the romantics, write in a thoughtful, sensitive language which would be attributed to femininity�
Authors fed through the Gender Genie:
William Makepeace Thackeray�s Vanity Fair: 4 blocks of text of 5 turned out feminine
Charles Dickens� Great Expectations: 5 blocks of text of 5 turned out feminine
(So far so good! If anyone cares to contribute to my research, please do (female authors welcomed too). I grab text from the Gutenberg project rather than typing it up myself. Suggestion: Original English texts only. I am not sure that other language texts (sometimes badly translated) into English would provide accurate information. Maybe I'll write more on the findings and a better, more elaborate explanation of my thought pattern with this later...)