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brooksmosesIn my various recent YouTube wanderings through videos from makers and builders and car-pokers of various sorts, I have come across a couple of videos from a channel called "AvE" (originally standing for "Arduino versus Evil", but having little to do with Arduinos at this stage) that might be of interest to people who aren't normally into mechanical how-to sorts of things.
First off, AvE's narrator does fascinating things with language. He's Canadian, he's done a couple of decades of work around the world repairing heavy mining equipment and the like, and as his YouTube persona he uses vulgar slang at least twice a sentence. I give that as a bit of a warning, in that he's a little hard to understand sometimes (particularly at first), and the language is sufficiently blue that I wouldn't want people to go into it unsuspecting.
The thing is, though, that he is doing that as someone who is very good at language. I present, as the first video recommendation, one that is him at the top of his language-play game: this soliloquy entitled "Removing Ticks from Engines". It's an homage to slapdash patching over of the noises that engines on heavily-used worn-out pickup trucks make and then paying the price of the slapdash patching. It happens to be in iambic pentameter, though I didn't notice that until someone pointed it out. Listen to it for phrases like "The best infernal combustion engine ever squoze out of a Detroit-city Friday-afternoon shift" and better. This one is also very light on the vulgar bits, if that matters to you.
The other video of his that I think might be interesting, for somewhat different reasons, is this discussion of what happened to cause a fatal construction-crane collapse in Seattle. (See also this followup.) The narrator's persona is very much one of vulgar, limited-expression-of-emotionality, tough masculinity. Not the toxic aspects of that sort of masculinity, mostly, but still: a fair bit of performative masculinity. This is a video where he is deeply angry and upset and sad about the carelessness that apparently caused this accident, and about the human emotional costs of it. It is fascinating, as a sociological study, to see how that sort of vulnerable and empathetic emotional caring comes through that persona -- and, yes, it does come through. It is a tone-perfect example of its kind, and one of the clearest that I have seen. Highly recommended, especially if that's not something you'd normally see much of and you want a counterpoint to only having toxic portrayals of that sort of masculinity.
Finally, I'd give you his "Summary of Every Self-Help Book Ever". It's not that; it's a summary of the actually-useful advice, simplified down to about one basic point, and he gets it just about right as far as I am concerned. One of the very best of the genre in my opinion, and I say that having listened to my mom playing hours of motivational speakers on audiotape in 8-hour car rides when I was a young teenager.
First off, AvE's narrator does fascinating things with language. He's Canadian, he's done a couple of decades of work around the world repairing heavy mining equipment and the like, and as his YouTube persona he uses vulgar slang at least twice a sentence. I give that as a bit of a warning, in that he's a little hard to understand sometimes (particularly at first), and the language is sufficiently blue that I wouldn't want people to go into it unsuspecting.
The thing is, though, that he is doing that as someone who is very good at language. I present, as the first video recommendation, one that is him at the top of his language-play game: this soliloquy entitled "Removing Ticks from Engines". It's an homage to slapdash patching over of the noises that engines on heavily-used worn-out pickup trucks make and then paying the price of the slapdash patching. It happens to be in iambic pentameter, though I didn't notice that until someone pointed it out. Listen to it for phrases like "The best infernal combustion engine ever squoze out of a Detroit-city Friday-afternoon shift" and better. This one is also very light on the vulgar bits, if that matters to you.
The other video of his that I think might be interesting, for somewhat different reasons, is this discussion of what happened to cause a fatal construction-crane collapse in Seattle. (See also this followup.) The narrator's persona is very much one of vulgar, limited-expression-of-emotionality, tough masculinity. Not the toxic aspects of that sort of masculinity, mostly, but still: a fair bit of performative masculinity. This is a video where he is deeply angry and upset and sad about the carelessness that apparently caused this accident, and about the human emotional costs of it. It is fascinating, as a sociological study, to see how that sort of vulnerable and empathetic emotional caring comes through that persona -- and, yes, it does come through. It is a tone-perfect example of its kind, and one of the clearest that I have seen. Highly recommended, especially if that's not something you'd normally see much of and you want a counterpoint to only having toxic portrayals of that sort of masculinity.
Finally, I'd give you his "Summary of Every Self-Help Book Ever". It's not that; it's a summary of the actually-useful advice, simplified down to about one basic point, and he gets it just about right as far as I am concerned. One of the very best of the genre in my opinion, and I say that having listened to my mom playing hours of motivational speakers on audiotape in 8-hour car rides when I was a young teenager.
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Date: 2020-02-07 04:26 pm (UTC)