As Recorded by his Students:
Brother Philip "Conifer" Coffinger
Brother Jeff "EDP Defamer" Mansburger
Dan "Eagle Scout" Marshal
Brother ***** "Subversive Hacker" ******
and
Brother Brennan "You Remind me of my Son" Sang
Graphically Desktop Published by Brother ***** "Subversive Hacker" ****** on the Glorious day of Emancipation, May 27th in the year of our Doug, 1994
The second (extremely limited) edition graphically desktop published June 18, 1994 by special request. One entry (the third to last one) was entered, the fonts were altered, and the word
"onomatopoeia" was corrected.
The third edition was made available on the highway of information February 14, 1996. The Wisdom was converted to HTML (by hand in the old world tradition) the introductory paragraphs were added to and slightly improved.
This fourth edition including illustrations and title graphics made available April 15, 1997. The final two entries were added between the last update and this one. Some spelling errors were corrected.
The reader should note that all of the content besides the titles/descriptions is directly quoted except in cases of [bracketed] text, or in cases of bold " ... " with a space to either side (which indicates skipping). All normal faced "..." are to be taken as meaning that the speaker has hung his phrase, or sometimes (if placed at the end of a quote) continued his sentence or subject in text not printed.
We did not make any of the following text up, it was all said--most of it quite seriously by one Doug Dykehouse, a Commercial Art instructor at the Van Buren Vocation Technical Center located in Lawrence, Michigan. We do not recommend that people wishing to do any kind of art take Mister Dykehouse' class, as he is not interested in providing a decent working environment for those of sound and creative mind. Only those of questionable intelligence and mental deficiency will find such an environment.
While his teaching skills are nonexistant, Doug's ability to mix up metaphors and talk forever about nothing in particular are legend. The longest we clocked him in at was two hours for a lecture to a single student (Brennan--he got more Wisdom than anybody else).
Most of The Wisdom is (unfortunatly) lost forever. Since all of this material was collected secretly, we not only had to be close enough to hear what Doug was saying but we also had to be able to write very quickly without paraphrasing.
Convoluted - "It's like a balloon. When I blow up a balloon, it gets smooth and round because there aren't any wrinkles. Then if you let the air out it gets like a prune, it's like your brain."
Printing - "If you're baking a cake, and you keep on opening the oven, then chances are, the cake won't turn out right."
Visitors to Lab - "Just like when you have visitors at home. You go about your business. At dinnertime you keep the stove cooking. You don't let anything burn. It's no different."
Projects - "Don't just take them home and put them in your bird bottom, bird bath, bird cage..."
Interview Skills - "If you could do everything, but couldn't communicate, you would be like a monkey. They'd say 'Macintosh' and hold up a banana, and 'ararara'..."
Manners - Rene, don't interrupt me right now, I'm in the middle of a delivery."
Portfolio Creation - "Now you can go to the closet and start stitching together these pieces of this Frankenstein..."
Spelling - "The best thing to do is not to overeat, or err, over-reach your skills..."
General Computer Pranks - "If they are pranks between ***** and you, and PJ and you, or Jeff and you, or you and you..."
Hard Drive Icon Pranks - "I haven't forgotten the Mr. T icon!"
Explanation for a ten minute lecture - "Now I'm not blaming you!"
Cryptic reference - "A dog doesn't... [long pause] ...in it's own bed."
Selling paintings - "It's like mowing the lawn: You do so many and you make money..."
Vacation - "It's like coming back to the table after going on a diet. You can't stay on Christmas vacation forever. Am I selling you? What I'm talking about here is satisfaction. If you're not satisfied with math or chemistry you hate it..."
Experience - "The Detroit Lions don't win games doing sit-ups, they have to go out and play the game..."
Portfolio - "Grab all your stuff, you've got to fatten that thing up...uh, for the slaughter. Like a Christmas turkey."
An openhouse for 6th graders - "I'll say something about the economy."
Terminal 10 (aka Kenny's computer) - "This machine has yet to be altered. And I'm nervous about you using it. You two, --uh-- there are people here who have the ability to change things. Don't change anything!"
Instructions - "What you can do is divide and conquer."
Why we can't just make a few signs to go on doors for an openhouse - "These are 8th graders."
Production job wisdom - "Do what the boss says, even though it's crazy. Jump off a ten story building. No, I don't want you to do that. ... I don't want you to do it your way. Do it my way. ... The boss is gonna say 'my way or the road'."
Guests - "Ryan, pull out Grolier's."
Loooooong lecture - "That's what you're struggling with in here, when you want to use HyperCard, or you want to use Photoshop, you disconnect the network."
Brilliantly clear Wisdom from the same lecture - "In the 60's what happened is the conceptual artists didn't have to do the work, they hired somebody else to do it, like a welder, and they had a brouhaha."
More on Grolier's - "Have you heard that 'we will go to the moon' thing? It's a good metaphor for this..."
Evolution - "If we all had Brother typewriters then we would all be dreaming of a Mac, and if we had a Mac, then we would be dreaming of multimedia and the information superhighway."
Advice for Brennan - "You don't want to screw up and become a no-brained nothing who just scripts stuff for people."
Drawing spaceships out of lobster - "As you were talking about these cartoons, I was thinking about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. You start with something slow, and you end up with all this stealth and kung-fu..."
Passing out blank paper - "I'll give you paper, rather than having you step out boldly where no one cares to go."
Making a HyperCard presentation to get into Summer Institute - "Here's a way to flatter yourself: I see you as a lightbulb, and I'm a fly. And you're throwing out these little beams of light and drawing me into them. Now it's my job to focus those beams, and help you to become a laser beam instead of a 20 watt lightbulb."
More on that HyperCard stack - "You could say 'I've travelled on I-94 a lot, I've really been a traveller' maybe all it is is that you've gone back and forth between Chicago and Detroit, and never left the state."
Doug - "PJ, Sarah, you need to get to work."
PJ - "Heather's got to use my scanner so I'm waiting."
Doug - "Well where does she sit?"
[PJ gestures]
Doug - "Go sit there while you wait."
Networking and BBS ("pick their pocket" said about four times) - "If you know somebody, pick their pocket, or their brain and find out..."
More on Networking (really demonstrating the "American Way") - "If you're suspected then you are guilty."
Shareware - "They're planting corn, a year later"
PJ's name written on a project sheet as being "Philip Conifer" -
PJ - "Is that supposed to be my name?"
Doug - "Yeah, Conifer...It's a cross between a mediator and a person who only eats vegetables."
Porn movies on public access TV - "It's like going 70 in a 35 [zone] and getting pulled over. You say to the police officer 'I didn't know I was going 70', but the police officer says 'Too bad', and gives you a ticket."
Standing around and talking - "Dan, Marshal, Sang, you guys are going out into the deep end. Come stay in the shallow end where your parents can watch you."
A rhetorical question - "What do you think I want you to do? Eat a peanut butter sandwich?"
Large student folders - "We're at critical mass here. We can't have these full of arbitrarily scanned images."
Projects - "You're waiting for the Titanic to come by, and it's at the bottom of the lake, you're waving your arms to see what will happen..."
More on reaching "critical mass" - "Now we're at that gridlock and we are spinning our wheels."
Action! Presentation problems - "To stay doggin' on it...that's a DOS mentality, I've gotta tell you that."
Same Action! lecture - "You've gotta be like a pitbull. So I'm telling you to know MacDraw. You know how to draw boxes."
Presenting things for the 8th Graders - "If you give 8th graders a bowl of minestrone soup, and they say 'what's in it?', and you say 'I don't know'..."
Getting away from the minestrone and even from the 8th graders, but still on the same subject - "People wish they could fix a car just by opening up the hood and tinkering but most of us can't do that, we need a plan..."
Said in a hushed tone, with hand gestures toward Dan - "Last year, Dan, I reeled him in. I asked him 'what do you have?' and he said 'nothing' and I said 'oh common you must have something' and he said 'I only need two more badges and I'm an eagle scout'..."
The never ending saga of "Why I am always right and everybody else is wrong" - "You're beating a dead horse here."
Experimentation by Brennan in Action! - "It's like walking into a gym, seeing a 400 pound barbell, and saying "no! put all the weight on." You can't start like that. Pick up some dumbbells, 25 pounds, do some pushups..."
More from that long Action! lecture - "Read my lips: 'because I said so'."
More petty dictatorship on Action! to Brennan - "Every day you come in playin' that game, you're gonna lose. 'Cause I'm in charge."
Standing behind ***** watching him type frustrations - "'Planning an outline is like waving a rifle around a target', it's ridiculous, I've stood behind you for 2 hours watching you."
Student "sports cards" by Kenny - "Collect 'em all, buy Wheaties ... It's like a business card, but more...maby put a résumé on the back."
High flying metaphor on "The way things are done" (more on Action! to Brennan) - "When we have a problem, we go around it. We don't take a 4-wheel drive through a farmer's corn field. We don't work that way."
Résumé lecture - "If an employer sees your short range goal that you wanna bake pizzas or shine shoes, he's saying 'no, we want a graphics desktop publisher.' ... You need to massage or transform some of that data into this form."
Perturbed interruptions - "When we get class sizes this large...I'm really a steamrollin' kinda guy - it keeps us right on track."
Addressing a question to *****, and then answering it himself - "*****, if you were a basketball player, and you won a district championship, would that be an accomplishment? Of course it would!"
Skills - "I can use Pexel Paint abubu-bu-bubububububu"
Outside interests - "If you breakdance, roller-skate, comb my hair for a hobby..."
Notable résumé worthy skills - "Burger King, burger-flipper-fryer,-taco-slammer."
References - "'Call my dad...he thinks I'm nice' -- NO."
Final lecture words, closing comment - "Got it? Get it. Toyota, hi-ya!"
Brennan saying the last quote back to him on a later date - "Did it, tried it, liked it, hated it."
Just the facts, ma'am - "They don't care if you wanna raise Chihuahuas."
Kenny's machine - "You can put like sixty megabytes of RAM in here and it'll run like an athlete with no tomorrow."
Sample explanation for missing files - "Somebody gets mad, their dog died...their dad --"
Pointing out how vast the project is (either portfolio or résumé) - "You're painting the Mackinaw bridge here. You get to one end and say where did I start? What did I do last summer?"
His brother's credentials - "That doesn't mean squat to the local union of sheet-metal workers."
Explanation - "You need to get a new shirt...a new résumé. (That's a metaphor)."
Getting distracted from his ramblings - "Using intelligent computers, I see four robins fighting. Just to prove that I can walk and chew gum at the same time."
Not a good idea for your résumé - "We may want to put it on purple paper, our logo on top, a 4x5 picture of yourself, six pages long..."
Nonconformity - "That guy who invented virtual reality...dreadlocks, obesity ... Shaq and Michael Jordan are breaking all the rules."
Something that could never happen - "My intention is not to bludgeon you with facts."
Tech Center - "We're a stitched Frankenstein, Lawton's the eyes, Gobles is the [teeth?], we're a freak."
Being humble about the wisdom - "I speak loudly so everyone can hear. I'm talking to everybody. I'd kinda like you to eavesdrop because it's useful information."
PJ's favorite quote - "It's like you're fishin'...and you've got a lunker, a 10-pound bass, and you start reeling it in. Individually, we may be able to finesse a pretty big fish into the boat. But it may have been bottom-feeding and eating lead, and later, we get a stomachache. It may mean that bass' sister, brother, cousin is in the boat."
How to beat The Man - "There's ways to shake and bake the system, we can kinda shadowbox our way through."
The words that pop into everybody's head when they think of Doug - "My father was Dutch. Authoritarian. Macho. You may even see some of that in me."
Random tidbits of Wisdom -
"Illogical, snitty, obtuse situations."
"Homogenize us." (said two or three times)
Finding your own job rather than going out on co-op - "If you can hitch-hike there, great. We're just not driving you there."
PJ returns the Macintosh User's book that he borrowed and gets an hour speech -
"I've got this traditional set of skills."
"It's the logic behind it...for $500, that's a lot of hardware...you might buy great traditional items for $500, a plastic Rolodex for $5, get a good Brother computer for word processing, a great calculator for $20, a little phone for storage, a Nintendo, a Sega..."
"You overbuy, it's like buying a Ferrari, and there's no place in Kalamazoo that you can drive it as fast as you want to drive it."
"If you're on a bulletin board, you are getting information, you're pullin', pullin', pullin'."
"I think it's because it's a man on his horse"
"TV commercials that sell me, you know, tell me what kind of peanut butter to buy."
"Did I overwhelm you with this? I used to do this to my son, he dropped out of Michigan, maybe I overwhelmed him..."
"One is getting one's feet wet on the highway of information here."
Incorporating sound into electronic portfolios - "Do you want a scary part where the robot says 'danger! danger!'?"
Lies, lies, lies - "You can't be creative in Auschwitz, you have to be free to taste and to explore and I understand that."
Baiting for students - "Here's a carrot, and a [hitting his hand]...stick!"
How people shouldn't learn things - "You are learning like a smorgasbord, eating a little bit of this and a little bit of this, but what do you have for dinner? You don't know."
Attempting to get people excited - "View this like a coach or a basketball game goin' like this TWEET! You got a lead!"
PJ - "You talked to my art teacher Mr. Wolff, huh?"
Doug - "Yes. Never cry wolf."
Boredom - "What are you gonna do with your time? Do something you already did. It may not seem worth it to you, but it is to me."
Finity - "The information is huge, but it is finite. The universe is finite too."
Beginning to get lost in hearing his own voice - "I've got jobs...logistics...picking up scraps of paper...if you turn this around, those little things are the building blocks. We're being ourselves on little tasks. I like this approach."
Really starting to sink into long, senseless babble - "This is not good just because Dykehouse says it's good, but because there's a community sense, instinctively, what you should do. If you just scurry around and let ourselves act like ants, we aren't building skyscrapers. That's just the way human beings are, it's a crap shoot."
Jumping from thought to thought - "They operate in a material world where they want to see it, touch it...so the goal is that each day you want to say 'Over here! Look this way! Over here' It's like a diet...but I think artistically, with this portfolio, it is something different...it's like eating a vegetable at first. When I started ten years ago...this desk...I took pride in that...but I was losing things and getting frustrated and getting frazzled ... I just want knowledge about myself..."
Onomatopoeia - "As one becomes a paper-pusher, a person's substance...what we're talking about here is substance...if a person's substance...there is strong evidence here that if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck; if you were building a building, you wouldn't start with the windows or the walls...smart people know that this is over here and this is over there...so we start bleeding together...you know that what you're doing is going to take care of this over here and this over here this over here...today you work on your résumé, that is the Escher puzzle for eight hours."
A variation of the "call my dad..." quote - "My boy's wonderful...he wouldn't do anything."
Using big words, but not really saying anything - "I'm not pontificating...they don't want someone that's just monkey-see, monkey-do..."
Subconscious reminders of Dan? - "This is like your life story ... if you're in Eagle Scouts...or two sports, or three..."
Showing what a true disciple he is - "We can not just put on a tie, or clean shirt, or...'grunge' [looking at Brennan] and think 'I'm worthy of God's love.' That's not enough to survive!"
Maturity - "One can say 'I bought a new suitcase...I'm prepared to leave.' We don't want to be treated as children ... 'clean your room'."
Things to put in your portfolio - "Your mom has pictures of you...at the beach...naked...mabe ***** in booties, dressed up like a girl...hmm..."
New "mini-portfolios" - "Scouting adventure, scout-o-rama, climbing Mount Everest, your pet parrot...say that's 'B.C.' - 'before the center', now -- *****, could you stop that typing?"
Singapore buttocks flogging - [awed, hushed voice] "I've heard it kills people!"
About the New Tif to Brennan -
"He's doing a report, using Grolier's, showing off his abilities."
"We should shame him because we want him to be like us who just roll around on the chairs and know everything but don't do anything."
Tornado drill Wisdom - "Follow my directions and behaviors exactly."
Deep thought - "Thinking is not a behavior, you have to do something."
Overheard tidbit - "I put 'em all in your box...kill 'em all, sort 'em out."
la la la la la - "You're greeking here...what you did is called greeking."
Showing greeking in mime - [covering his ears] "It's like, 'I can't hear you, I can't hear you!'"
Approval of Brennan's mini-portfolio - "You're hired Brennan. Double your wages. Double your fun."
Doug - "Sarah!"
Sarah - "I'm going! Give me a second!"
Doug - "You don't have a second! I told you to move 15 minutes ago!"
Wasting time - "You're wasting time. A rose by any other name...Peewee."
"Get back to work even though nobody else is" speech (one of a series of 50 or so) - [five minutes of street mime gestures] "Oh no, he's gonna give a speech...Dykehouse...we know...here's a million dollars...oh, I think I can find something to do."
Wasting time on skills - "You're going through grandma's attic, looking at boxes, labeling them with a felt pen; browsing, killing time."
MacDraw employability -
"There are certain skills we obtain, whether it be doing a scan, or grouping in MacDraw. You show that to an employer...You're employable."
"It's like eating a diet of Twinkies...it'll make you sick, your brain will get sick."
Competency - "An employer, says 'What can you do?' and you say 'Cruise the information highway, browse, clip...'"
Finding a common ground - "If you're an archer or a golfer and the employer says 'you're an archer? I won the championship. You use a 20 pound compound? Hunt deer?'"
Browsing - "If you get in a car, pop the clutch, go through all four speeds, ten...would that be driving?"
Impressive portfolio material (is it a Dan fixation?) - "If you raise thoroughbred dogs, bowl 300 games, Eagle Scout..."
Showing worth - "If you can't show it in a product, then it isn't a skill."
Fish story - "I'm doing an instructional delivery, it's like a trout, a wild trout..."
Saving work - "Your going to have to choose your top five, put them on a disk and call them macaroni."
Teaching Christian religion in public schools - "It would be nice if we could offer a balanced meal, rather than wait until afterward to fix that deficiency."
The network - "Ding dong, wing whack, Scotty-Beam-Me-Aboard."
Tampering -
"There's kind of an attitude of 'kill 'em all, sort 'em later.' ya know, save 'em all..."
"If you're painting a room 'Oh God, a metaphor!'...and you walk back through the wet paint..."
Regret - "We can say 'coulda-shoulda-oughta-might'..."
Talking to Brennan about mini-portfolio -
"I understand that there are blocks in your head."
"You've gotta get down, get dirty, get gritty."
"If you've got lemons, you make lemonade. You don't make chocolate milk out of that."
Wasting time - "Somebody with huge biceps keeps doing curls. You shouldn't, it's ridiculous. Your arms are big enough."
Ourselves; what we are...philosophy - "Workers, worker-ants, busy bees. We're just a bunch of Egyptians trying to build a pyramid, hauling around stone blocks."
Kenny and MacDraw - "He is the king of MacDraw. He is MacDraw...change his name...get a tartan and a bagpipe...clan MacDraw..."
Bad F-Line instruction (showing that he really doesn't know what he's talking about) - "Turn everything off. What happens when you do this, is the hard drive completely slows down to speed. That [error] happened because too much data was coming through from the hard drive to the computer."
Assigning computers - "They both run MacDraw, what's the difference?"
Suggesting an activity - "You wanna use Grolier's? A lot of knowledge there."
Big enough to be macaroni - "It's still big enough, why don't I fix it and call it macaroni...?"
More on size - "The graphic doesn't say 'I'm gonna be as big as I wanna be.'"
Messing - "I'm messin' with you. There's good messin', and bad messin'. This is good messin'"
Wandering evolution - "If your navigating the highway...the information highway...and PhotoShop is the mecca...and you stop off at Pexel Paint alley...you find it's obsolete."
Speaking the language of his home planet - "When you bring it back, none of the nuts better be humana hutztie uballa whatzkie..."
Telling what people's goals should be - "Making money is not a goal. Graphics desktop publishing is our goal. I could say my goal is to own a lawnmower."
One and a-half hour lecture to Brennan and PJ -
"I'll tangle with you, I'll box you into the middle of next week."
"You don't draw your sword and cut people's head's off to show your strength."
"Two extra grains of salt won't spoil the cake, but a straw will break the camel's back."
Doug - "I can hear you, *****."
***** - "I can hear you too, Mr. Dykehouse."
Doug - "I'm not your dog, I'm not your friend, I'm your teacher, and you come in here and [sass me off], I'm gonna get in your face."
Count down to critical mass? - "We've got this Led Zeppelin, this gar- leviathon, it's huge! But we don't know how soon we're gonna reach critical mass. It's like...you ever heard of the spruce goose?"
Thievery? - "If I say don't steal a candy bar, and next time you steal a bowling ball, it's still stealing."
Paper v. Dykehouse? - "This is legal size. It doesn't mean it's legal like the law."
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