I've moved and I don't have internet at the house yet, but I'm still planning on hanging out here, still planning on being my usual sarcastic self.
Is anyone else going to play, too?
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Thursday, June 3, 2010
It's all you, baby
A student does indeed get what she puts into an education, but she often gets a great deal more.
Sometimes, she gets a language barrier she must overcome. She takes a math class taught by a graduate student from China, and she must work very hard to understand what is said. She may have to go so far as to learn Chinese as well as math. What a gift! She has had two educations for the price of one! Of course, she gets an A from this, because look at all she has put into that one class. (Naturally not at the expense of any others.)
Sometimes she gets the benefit of working as well as school. This keeps her and any household members fed, the lights on, and the internet connection intact. This was a gift from the state and the university system, who were both on the edge of bankruptcy and could not afford to give her grants or scholarships. A gift! Now she has work experience in the real world, and that sleep deficit is naturally temporary. It's not like she can make it up, and besides, there are never any repercussions to losing a little sleep to finish those papers or presentation. She can't get sick (there's no time!) or hurt herself on those three hours of sleep some nights.
Sometimes she gets shocking traumas, like when a family member injures himself and has to have major surgery. He can't work for six to eight months, so she gets the benefit of working to cover that deficit--more life experience--and also, for a time, caring for someone who has lost significant mobility and has extreme (broken bones!) pain. That's okay! She has been given the gift of a life experience she can write about! Woo hoo! Instant book.
Occasionally, she is given the gift of a professor who doesn't like women. The law is supposed to protect her, and for the most part, does. She gets a good grade, because no one can prove she didn't do the work, but she gets the subtle edge of discrimination, the professor's disgust, and the feeling that no matter what she does, it will never be as good as what her male classmates do. Another gift! This will toughen her up for the future, because when she gets out into the real world, she will already know that she will run up against white male privilege, that she will be treated like a toy or an inconvenience, and that there are places she will never be allowed to go. (Customs are always stronger than laws, you know.) Besides, if she's a really good girl and a really good student, she can win him over and make him like her.
And best of all, she can work her ass off, graduate with honors, and still be patted on the head and told that it's all her fault if she didn't wring the last drop of wonderfulness from her education. There's no reason to complain about anything--nobody has any effect on her education but her. There is no such thing as injustice or misfortune, and everyone in the world is just as wonderful and hardworking as she is. There is no corruption in the world or particularly in the perfect university system, and no one ever does anything to actively harm anyone else, ever.
Okay, I think my sarcasm is even offending me at this point.
What I'm trying to say here is that students are only part of the equation. The teachers are also a huge part, and so is the administration. It a system, and the system only works if all the pieces of the system work. The student has to do her part. The professor has to do his part. The administration has to do its part. The state and the federal government need to do theirs.
I find it frustrating as a student who has worked very hard and gotten very good grades and learned a lot from some excellent professors, to be patronized and patted on the head and told it is my problem if I didn't get the best education in the world. Actually, no. While my education may be a privilege and not a right, it IS my right to speak up when I see something that is wrong or something that is hindering my education or the education of my classmates. It's not just my right but my duty to speak up when I see injustice and discrimination.
At 42 years old, I've walked a very long road to the end of this degree. I've made mistakes and I've paid for them. I've made achievements, and to be honest, I've paid for those, too. As a woman, my road has been entirely different from a man's road, because there's this little problem of biology that I have to overcome: I brought another man into the world. And I am expected, as a woman, to be a mother first, and then a student. So I am judged for several things. Reproducing at all. Going to school when I should be raising my child. Raising a child when I should be going to school. Sleeping when I should be writing papers. Working when I should be raising a child and going to school. Living on the edge of poverty because I'm working as little as possible.
It is just amazing to me that someone can look me in the face after all that and say, "Well, it's your fault you didn't get the most of your education. You get what you put into it."
Whatever! I'll just write about it. Bestseller!
Sometimes, she gets a language barrier she must overcome. She takes a math class taught by a graduate student from China, and she must work very hard to understand what is said. She may have to go so far as to learn Chinese as well as math. What a gift! She has had two educations for the price of one! Of course, she gets an A from this, because look at all she has put into that one class. (Naturally not at the expense of any others.)
Sometimes she gets the benefit of working as well as school. This keeps her and any household members fed, the lights on, and the internet connection intact. This was a gift from the state and the university system, who were both on the edge of bankruptcy and could not afford to give her grants or scholarships. A gift! Now she has work experience in the real world, and that sleep deficit is naturally temporary. It's not like she can make it up, and besides, there are never any repercussions to losing a little sleep to finish those papers or presentation. She can't get sick (there's no time!) or hurt herself on those three hours of sleep some nights.
Sometimes she gets shocking traumas, like when a family member injures himself and has to have major surgery. He can't work for six to eight months, so she gets the benefit of working to cover that deficit--more life experience--and also, for a time, caring for someone who has lost significant mobility and has extreme (broken bones!) pain. That's okay! She has been given the gift of a life experience she can write about! Woo hoo! Instant book.
Occasionally, she is given the gift of a professor who doesn't like women. The law is supposed to protect her, and for the most part, does. She gets a good grade, because no one can prove she didn't do the work, but she gets the subtle edge of discrimination, the professor's disgust, and the feeling that no matter what she does, it will never be as good as what her male classmates do. Another gift! This will toughen her up for the future, because when she gets out into the real world, she will already know that she will run up against white male privilege, that she will be treated like a toy or an inconvenience, and that there are places she will never be allowed to go. (Customs are always stronger than laws, you know.) Besides, if she's a really good girl and a really good student, she can win him over and make him like her.
And best of all, she can work her ass off, graduate with honors, and still be patted on the head and told that it's all her fault if she didn't wring the last drop of wonderfulness from her education. There's no reason to complain about anything--nobody has any effect on her education but her. There is no such thing as injustice or misfortune, and everyone in the world is just as wonderful and hardworking as she is. There is no corruption in the world or particularly in the perfect university system, and no one ever does anything to actively harm anyone else, ever.
Okay, I think my sarcasm is even offending me at this point.
What I'm trying to say here is that students are only part of the equation. The teachers are also a huge part, and so is the administration. It a system, and the system only works if all the pieces of the system work. The student has to do her part. The professor has to do his part. The administration has to do its part. The state and the federal government need to do theirs.
I find it frustrating as a student who has worked very hard and gotten very good grades and learned a lot from some excellent professors, to be patronized and patted on the head and told it is my problem if I didn't get the best education in the world. Actually, no. While my education may be a privilege and not a right, it IS my right to speak up when I see something that is wrong or something that is hindering my education or the education of my classmates. It's not just my right but my duty to speak up when I see injustice and discrimination.
At 42 years old, I've walked a very long road to the end of this degree. I've made mistakes and I've paid for them. I've made achievements, and to be honest, I've paid for those, too. As a woman, my road has been entirely different from a man's road, because there's this little problem of biology that I have to overcome: I brought another man into the world. And I am expected, as a woman, to be a mother first, and then a student. So I am judged for several things. Reproducing at all. Going to school when I should be raising my child. Raising a child when I should be going to school. Sleeping when I should be writing papers. Working when I should be raising a child and going to school. Living on the edge of poverty because I'm working as little as possible.
It is just amazing to me that someone can look me in the face after all that and say, "Well, it's your fault you didn't get the most of your education. You get what you put into it."
Whatever! I'll just write about it. Bestseller!
Monday, May 31, 2010
Practice and Improvement
I've been thinking about drawing again.
I am not a good artist. My proportions are off, and my line drawings are too light. I don't have confidence in my abilities, so I tend to use too light a pencil, so that I can erase and redraw as often as possible. When I scan my work to show my artist friend J, a lot of what I have drawn is lost because the scanner can't pick up or misrepresents the faint lines.
Every time I think about drawing, though, I shy away from it, because I tend to have a static concept of my abilities. People in general have that idea about any artist, though, I think. We believe that everyone has a set amount of talent and that ability cannot be exceeded. If it is exceeded, we suspect it as forgery or some kind of cheating, particularly with today's tools.
My friend J ran into this problem a few years ago. When she was in college, some thirty years ago, she was an artist, but life and a Ph.D in history intervened, and she put her pencils down. In the late 90s, she picked them up again because she was inspired by different works to try again. She sent me copies of some of the first things she drew, some scenes and character studies from stories I had written, and they were fun, but they weren't at the level we consider art. Some of the proportions were strange, and there were some adaptations of other works of art, changed to represent my characters.
But she never stopped drawing, and she started working in various media, playing, working, getting into practice again. She then got inspired by the Hornblower series, by the character Bush in particular, and her work really took off. Not only were her proportions correct, but she captured levels of emotion in her drawings that just blew me away.
In the mid- to late 2000s, she started sharing some of her work on the internet beyond her friends, to people in the Hornblower fandom and others. She left academia and got work in design. Her drawings got even better, which didn't seem possible, and that's when the trouble started.
Some people began accusing her of simply Photoshopping photographs of the characters with graphic design tools used to approximate hand-drawn works. In fandom, we call this kind of controversy, in which both sides become hugely offended and battle lines are drawn, a kerfuffle. It was an ugly thing and my friend was greatly offended by it.
One of the complaints about her work was that it was too good to be real, as though she, as a member of fandom, was only allowed a certain level of ability and was not to exceed it. Many people in fandom have visited her while she was working on these projects, saw them in various stages of completion, and could vouch for their legitimate creation by hand. The sad thing is, those corroborrations were dismissed because those people were her friends, and it's the nature of the internet community to be both excessively skeptical and naive at the same time.
She did the work, no doubt, and knowing my friend's absolute standard of honesty, I know that it would be impossible for her to even consider faking something like this for approval.
That is not my point. My point is that somewhere in our brains, as humans, we do not allow people the ability to improve their abilities through practice. We think of talent as static, and whatever a person can do at one time is what they can do for all times. A person is not allowed to go from strange proportions to transcendent art. That is suspect.
What I realized this morning, though, as I was working on one of my portfolio pieces for class is that we hold this same standard to ourselves. Think about what Stephen King says in On Writing. A competent writer can become a good writer, but a bad writer cannot become competent, nor can a good writer become great. There is a disconnect here. You can have this much improvement, and no more. You will never really be any better than you are right now. You will not have epiphanies and breakthroughs and great art. Whatever you are at 20 is what you will be forever.
That, my friends, is bullshit. (Sorry, Steve! I call bullshit on you!)
How did my friend get from where she was to where she is? She never put down the pencils (or charcoals or pastels). Her lines improved, her shading improved, her eye improved. She worked and worked and worked, and now her art is amazing.
This can be done with writing as well, but how often do we really do it? My friend's art didn't improve because she kept drawing the same lines over and over. Every time she picked up that pencil and looked at her subject, she made a conscious effort to improve what she did. Yes, the physical skill of linedrawing improves with constant practice, but she was rarely satisfied with a piece.
Once I complained to her that I was having trouble finishing a story, and she said, "You know, I don't get you writers. Why do you have to finish it? I don't finish every piece I start. Sometimes a piece just has a purpose, and when that purpose is complete, you put it aside. Or if it's an experiment that failed, you throw it away. Why do you have to finish everything?"
Maybe she's right. Maybe some pieces are just a tuneup, a problem to be solved. Solve the problem, set it down and walk away. Write the piece and discard it. We don't have to finish everything. We don't have to finish everything. There's only one writer I can think of who's ever had almost everything published in his lifetime, and that's Robert A. Heinlein. And his estate is still trying to pimp that last piece out there, from what I remember. A great many great writers got very little published during their lives but had volumes of genius or near genius published after their deaths. Dickinson and Peirce, to name two.
(To be honest, I'd rather not emulate Heinlein. Thanks.)
In those tuneups, those pieces, those problems to be solved, are the key to development. They are the practice that leads to improvement. There's more to it than that, though. We have to also break through that barrier of ourselves that is comfortable with what we are, and we have to reach for higher than we think we can stretch. I believe that is what those great writers do. They are not the incomprehensible freaks that King tells us they are. They are people who all their lives refuse to be limited by their own minds. They constantly stretch higher than they can reach, and have been doing it since they were in diapers. Naturally they can reach far beyond us--they have been stretching their whole lives.
My friend picked up her pencils again in her late 30s, early 40s. She has grown immensely as an artist. It's not too late for me. I just have to do the work. I have to practice, solve the problems, tune it up....work.
Time to stretch!
I am not a good artist. My proportions are off, and my line drawings are too light. I don't have confidence in my abilities, so I tend to use too light a pencil, so that I can erase and redraw as often as possible. When I scan my work to show my artist friend J, a lot of what I have drawn is lost because the scanner can't pick up or misrepresents the faint lines.
Every time I think about drawing, though, I shy away from it, because I tend to have a static concept of my abilities. People in general have that idea about any artist, though, I think. We believe that everyone has a set amount of talent and that ability cannot be exceeded. If it is exceeded, we suspect it as forgery or some kind of cheating, particularly with today's tools.
My friend J ran into this problem a few years ago. When she was in college, some thirty years ago, she was an artist, but life and a Ph.D in history intervened, and she put her pencils down. In the late 90s, she picked them up again because she was inspired by different works to try again. She sent me copies of some of the first things she drew, some scenes and character studies from stories I had written, and they were fun, but they weren't at the level we consider art. Some of the proportions were strange, and there were some adaptations of other works of art, changed to represent my characters.
But she never stopped drawing, and she started working in various media, playing, working, getting into practice again. She then got inspired by the Hornblower series, by the character Bush in particular, and her work really took off. Not only were her proportions correct, but she captured levels of emotion in her drawings that just blew me away.
In the mid- to late 2000s, she started sharing some of her work on the internet beyond her friends, to people in the Hornblower fandom and others. She left academia and got work in design. Her drawings got even better, which didn't seem possible, and that's when the trouble started.
Some people began accusing her of simply Photoshopping photographs of the characters with graphic design tools used to approximate hand-drawn works. In fandom, we call this kind of controversy, in which both sides become hugely offended and battle lines are drawn, a kerfuffle. It was an ugly thing and my friend was greatly offended by it.
One of the complaints about her work was that it was too good to be real, as though she, as a member of fandom, was only allowed a certain level of ability and was not to exceed it. Many people in fandom have visited her while she was working on these projects, saw them in various stages of completion, and could vouch for their legitimate creation by hand. The sad thing is, those corroborrations were dismissed because those people were her friends, and it's the nature of the internet community to be both excessively skeptical and naive at the same time.
She did the work, no doubt, and knowing my friend's absolute standard of honesty, I know that it would be impossible for her to even consider faking something like this for approval.
That is not my point. My point is that somewhere in our brains, as humans, we do not allow people the ability to improve their abilities through practice. We think of talent as static, and whatever a person can do at one time is what they can do for all times. A person is not allowed to go from strange proportions to transcendent art. That is suspect.
What I realized this morning, though, as I was working on one of my portfolio pieces for class is that we hold this same standard to ourselves. Think about what Stephen King says in On Writing. A competent writer can become a good writer, but a bad writer cannot become competent, nor can a good writer become great. There is a disconnect here. You can have this much improvement, and no more. You will never really be any better than you are right now. You will not have epiphanies and breakthroughs and great art. Whatever you are at 20 is what you will be forever.
That, my friends, is bullshit. (Sorry, Steve! I call bullshit on you!)
How did my friend get from where she was to where she is? She never put down the pencils (or charcoals or pastels). Her lines improved, her shading improved, her eye improved. She worked and worked and worked, and now her art is amazing.
This can be done with writing as well, but how often do we really do it? My friend's art didn't improve because she kept drawing the same lines over and over. Every time she picked up that pencil and looked at her subject, she made a conscious effort to improve what she did. Yes, the physical skill of linedrawing improves with constant practice, but she was rarely satisfied with a piece.
Once I complained to her that I was having trouble finishing a story, and she said, "You know, I don't get you writers. Why do you have to finish it? I don't finish every piece I start. Sometimes a piece just has a purpose, and when that purpose is complete, you put it aside. Or if it's an experiment that failed, you throw it away. Why do you have to finish everything?"
Maybe she's right. Maybe some pieces are just a tuneup, a problem to be solved. Solve the problem, set it down and walk away. Write the piece and discard it. We don't have to finish everything. We don't have to finish everything. There's only one writer I can think of who's ever had almost everything published in his lifetime, and that's Robert A. Heinlein. And his estate is still trying to pimp that last piece out there, from what I remember. A great many great writers got very little published during their lives but had volumes of genius or near genius published after their deaths. Dickinson and Peirce, to name two.
(To be honest, I'd rather not emulate Heinlein. Thanks.)
In those tuneups, those pieces, those problems to be solved, are the key to development. They are the practice that leads to improvement. There's more to it than that, though. We have to also break through that barrier of ourselves that is comfortable with what we are, and we have to reach for higher than we think we can stretch. I believe that is what those great writers do. They are not the incomprehensible freaks that King tells us they are. They are people who all their lives refuse to be limited by their own minds. They constantly stretch higher than they can reach, and have been doing it since they were in diapers. Naturally they can reach far beyond us--they have been stretching their whole lives.
My friend picked up her pencils again in her late 30s, early 40s. She has grown immensely as an artist. It's not too late for me. I just have to do the work. I have to practice, solve the problems, tune it up....work.
Time to stretch!
Friday, May 28, 2010
I am bored, therefore I Sim
I play the Sims whenever I have time, which is not often these days. I had the original version all the way through "Makin' Magic," and I loved the Sims 2 when things moved into 3D and you could have generations that grew up and died off. Now I have the Sims 3 and I love it, with some reservations. It's a bit harder to kill off your Sims now, because they are so much more self-directed. (Plus, they gave them the intelligence and animation to get out of the pool by themselves, so you can't drown your Sims by just taking away the ladder!) You pretty much have to starve them by removing all refrigerators or walling them up in a room with no doors.
Still, this video--more reminiscient of the Sims 2--is hilarious for those of us who have played the game. Yes, the Sims can be just this stupid. It's lying to you--you have to watch it on YouTube. It won't let me embed it. Still, watch it. It's funny.
Another thing that makes me love the Sims 3 a bit less: it's not as easy or intuitive to share pictures and stories of your Sims as it was with Sims 2. There's more work involved. That's why I haven't done it. Otherwise, I'd be inflicting my families on all of you a lot more often.
Gods, I love this stupid game.
Still, this video--more reminiscient of the Sims 2--is hilarious for those of us who have played the game. Yes, the Sims can be just this stupid. It's lying to you--you have to watch it on YouTube. It won't let me embed it. Still, watch it. It's funny.
Another thing that makes me love the Sims 3 a bit less: it's not as easy or intuitive to share pictures and stories of your Sims as it was with Sims 2. There's more work involved. That's why I haven't done it. Otherwise, I'd be inflicting my families on all of you a lot more often.
Gods, I love this stupid game.
A small fandom break
I don't watch TV unless I'm with Jeff. That's it, really--he watches TV and I generally don't. I will, however, watch whole seasons of TV shows on DVD, because I like continuity and I hate commercials. So there are some TV shows that I've watched several seasons of and grown to love.
Tonight, I was cleaning one of the booths and I noticed the last guests had been watching Leverage, a show starring Timothy Hutton. I've been meaning to get to this one, because I've heard it's really good. One of the characters popped up on the screen in the intro. They called him the "Hitter." The show is about a guy (Hutton) who gets together a bunch of very talented criminals and has them help him take revenge on people who do bad things. The Hitter, as far as I can tell, is the muscle guy.
He looked really familiar to me. In fact, I kept thinking, oddly, "I know you. I know you and I love you. Who are you?" It was a really strange feeling. How do you know you love someone you don't recognize? And yet, I looked at that screen and that character and felt that upwelling, that confusing affection, and wondered if I was confusing this actor with another actor somehow. (I do that a lot. Remind me to tell you some of my strange confusions sometime.)
So familiar. So dear.
And then it hit me. I pushed back from the table I was cleaning, sat up straight and yelped, "LINDSAY! Omigod, LINDSAY!"
Lindsay, from Angel! I do love him. I do, very much. I wanted to reach into the screen and scoop him up and say, "Darling! Where have you been! I'm so happy for you, in such a good show! Oh, Lindsay!" And pet him and hug him, smooth his long, unkempt hair.
Christian Kane is his name. I just looked him up on IMdb. I'm just happy for him that he's found something good. He played such a fascinating character on Angel, with so many lovely facets.... Yes, he's one of my intellectual crushes, in a way.
This happens to me all the time. Some of my LiveJournal friends no doubt remember the last time, when Darla showed up on one of the Law and Order shows, I think, and then Dexter. (Julie Benz.)
I know I'm a bit strange. When I love people, even imaginary people on TV, I really love them. It makes me happy to see them again and working, doing well. Maybe it's the theatre background. I love actors that do good work, and I love wonderful characters and good writing. Christian Kane is a delight, and so is Julie Benz, and Seth Green....*happy sigh*
After a not so fun week, this was a delightful surprise.
Tonight, I was cleaning one of the booths and I noticed the last guests had been watching Leverage, a show starring Timothy Hutton. I've been meaning to get to this one, because I've heard it's really good. One of the characters popped up on the screen in the intro. They called him the "Hitter." The show is about a guy (Hutton) who gets together a bunch of very talented criminals and has them help him take revenge on people who do bad things. The Hitter, as far as I can tell, is the muscle guy.
He looked really familiar to me. In fact, I kept thinking, oddly, "I know you. I know you and I love you. Who are you?" It was a really strange feeling. How do you know you love someone you don't recognize? And yet, I looked at that screen and that character and felt that upwelling, that confusing affection, and wondered if I was confusing this actor with another actor somehow. (I do that a lot. Remind me to tell you some of my strange confusions sometime.)
So familiar. So dear.
And then it hit me. I pushed back from the table I was cleaning, sat up straight and yelped, "LINDSAY! Omigod, LINDSAY!"
Lindsay, from Angel! I do love him. I do, very much. I wanted to reach into the screen and scoop him up and say, "Darling! Where have you been! I'm so happy for you, in such a good show! Oh, Lindsay!" And pet him and hug him, smooth his long, unkempt hair.
Christian Kane is his name. I just looked him up on IMdb. I'm just happy for him that he's found something good. He played such a fascinating character on Angel, with so many lovely facets.... Yes, he's one of my intellectual crushes, in a way.
This happens to me all the time. Some of my LiveJournal friends no doubt remember the last time, when Darla showed up on one of the Law and Order shows, I think, and then Dexter. (Julie Benz.)
I know I'm a bit strange. When I love people, even imaginary people on TV, I really love them. It makes me happy to see them again and working, doing well. Maybe it's the theatre background. I love actors that do good work, and I love wonderful characters and good writing. Christian Kane is a delight, and so is Julie Benz, and Seth Green....*happy sigh*
After a not so fun week, this was a delightful surprise.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
End of Term Blues
I spent most of yesterday being sad.
I was worried that it was the depression coming back. Every so often, I get inexplicable bouts of crazy thinking, when I'm just unbearably unhappy and there's no reason for it. The tiniest setback in the day can send me into a death spiral where the most productive thing I can do for the day or even the week is sleep. Being conscious sends the spiral even deeper, and there are places I've been on those turns that I don't ever want to be again. When that happens, I sleep if I can, or write crazy poetry if I can't.
(When the hell did I become a poet? I've never been a poet. I don't understand this. I still don't think I'm a poet. I just write the stuff when I can't take any more of life and it's poetry or the unthinkable.)
But I don't think it's the depression because the death spiral involves self-destructive thinking. Not necessarily actual destruction, though anyone who has been truly depressed has probably had suicide ideation. Someday, let's talk honestly about suicide ideation, because a friend and I have some interesting thoughts on it, but today is not that day. Let's try a day when it isn't raining, I don't have a lot of deadlines looming and I don't feel inexplicably sad.
I think it's just the end of term blues. The end of my last quarter at Eastern is coming up fast. I'm out of money and I'm nearly at the end of my job. I have just a few big tasks left, and then I get to walk onto Woodward Field in a silly gown and pick up the frame for the diploma that should arrive before the beginning of fall quarter.
(Can I brag a second here? Summa cum f'n laude, baby. You know it.)
So I should be happy, right? I'm graduating with honors. I'm leaving the casino. I'm moving out of this apartment. I'm going to fall into Jeff's arms with abject relief, and I'm going to start my new life. I have three job prospects lined up, none of which is fantabulous, but money is money, you know. My new home will have an office set up for me so I can write. I'll be with my family and the man I love, and I'll get to go fishing and camping, and I heard a rumor there's going to be a barbecue in my honor.
I should be ecstatic, right?
What the hell is wrong with my brain? I am not happy. I am scared and sad. I've lost about thirteen pounds of worry weight, and I just don't want to do anything. I feel utterly paralyzed thinking about the papers I need to write, the presentation I need to complete, the portfolio I have to submit.
My entire life, I have had this battle. I was valedictorian in high school, honor society, drama, you name it. Big fish in a tiny pond.
I remember the first play I was cast in my freshman year. I was fourteen years old, and they cast me as the lead--the crazy old lady--in The Curious Savage. You would not have believed the backlash. I don't think there was a cast member in that show who wanted anything to do with me, and the director made it worse by making me an example. The other players kept blowing their lines, but I kept nailing mine. (I was a freshman. They told me to memorize my lines. I did. Silly me.) As the director went on and on about how I was just a lowly freshman, but someone who could manage to memorize the part, the other players killed me with their eyes. Laser beams and hot pokers could not have hurt as much.
Then the morning of dress rehearsal, I woke up and couldn't speak. My voice was gone. My throat was hot, red and prickly, and my vocal cords felt about the size of those styrofoam noodle things you can play with in your pool. I tried. Really. I wanted to speak. This was not me trying to get in good with my castmates by faking vulnerabiliIty. I could not speak. Period.
My director freaked out. The school was small enough that we did not assign understudies. I had to go on that stage and I had to squeak out my role. The show must go on.
Dress rehearsal was a disaster. I could see the director in the audience, clenching her fists and shaking her head. She wandered through the auditorium through the whole performance, listening here, listening there. I couldn't be heard past the second row. On the breaks, she would feed me hot tea, rub my shoulder and give me a one-armed hug. "Just get lots of rest," she said. "Get better."
Opening night, I got to the stage behind the curtain, and croaked out a greeting to the cast, who just shook their heads sadly at me. Some rolled their eyes and walked away. The director shrugged and said, "Do the best you can." They left me to it.
The lights came up. The show went on. I remember that part of what I was supposed to do was circle the stage, pacing very deliberately. I think for my first few lines, I croaked and I could see the audience straining toward me. Then I got the cue for my first big line. "What are you doing?"
"Wearing the carpet out evenly," I said, in a perfectly normal and projected voice. The audience burst out laughing. My castmate and I stared at each other for a second. The laughter gave us a second to recover. Then we gulped, started in and went back to the work of acting.
My voice was perfectly normal for the rest of the show. And every show after that.
Until the winter, when it happened again. This time, the director didn't freak out, but she told me to rest and relax, and when I started the show with a normal voice, she just grinned at me. It became a running joke: Dawn's dress rehearsal laryngitis again.
I was in eight plays, one for every semester of high school, and I lost and regained my voice for each play. It was like a ritual; I would develop laryngitis, step onto the stage opening night, and kill the audience dead. Every single time.
I didn't have a conscious awareness of stage fright, but my body manifested it nonetheless. I just had to force myself through it, and then I was fine.
I think the same thing is happening now, but my body or my stupid brain doesn't know how to try to derail this thing I'm on. This sadness, this possible depression, is my dress rehearsal laryngitis. I think that some part of me believes that I will give up and run away before the end. I've done it before. Oh, I've flamed out spectacularly in school before. I swear you could have watched me and heard the whistling sound of my meteor-like fall and the explosion when I hit the ground.
I just have to get to that big line. I have to get up on stage and speak my line. That's all I have to do, and I will be okay. Maybe not ecstatic--but I will be okay.
That's all.
I was worried that it was the depression coming back. Every so often, I get inexplicable bouts of crazy thinking, when I'm just unbearably unhappy and there's no reason for it. The tiniest setback in the day can send me into a death spiral where the most productive thing I can do for the day or even the week is sleep. Being conscious sends the spiral even deeper, and there are places I've been on those turns that I don't ever want to be again. When that happens, I sleep if I can, or write crazy poetry if I can't.
(When the hell did I become a poet? I've never been a poet. I don't understand this. I still don't think I'm a poet. I just write the stuff when I can't take any more of life and it's poetry or the unthinkable.)
But I don't think it's the depression because the death spiral involves self-destructive thinking. Not necessarily actual destruction, though anyone who has been truly depressed has probably had suicide ideation. Someday, let's talk honestly about suicide ideation, because a friend and I have some interesting thoughts on it, but today is not that day. Let's try a day when it isn't raining, I don't have a lot of deadlines looming and I don't feel inexplicably sad.
I think it's just the end of term blues. The end of my last quarter at Eastern is coming up fast. I'm out of money and I'm nearly at the end of my job. I have just a few big tasks left, and then I get to walk onto Woodward Field in a silly gown and pick up the frame for the diploma that should arrive before the beginning of fall quarter.
(Can I brag a second here? Summa cum f'n laude, baby. You know it.)
So I should be happy, right? I'm graduating with honors. I'm leaving the casino. I'm moving out of this apartment. I'm going to fall into Jeff's arms with abject relief, and I'm going to start my new life. I have three job prospects lined up, none of which is fantabulous, but money is money, you know. My new home will have an office set up for me so I can write. I'll be with my family and the man I love, and I'll get to go fishing and camping, and I heard a rumor there's going to be a barbecue in my honor.
I should be ecstatic, right?
What the hell is wrong with my brain? I am not happy. I am scared and sad. I've lost about thirteen pounds of worry weight, and I just don't want to do anything. I feel utterly paralyzed thinking about the papers I need to write, the presentation I need to complete, the portfolio I have to submit.
My entire life, I have had this battle. I was valedictorian in high school, honor society, drama, you name it. Big fish in a tiny pond.
I remember the first play I was cast in my freshman year. I was fourteen years old, and they cast me as the lead--the crazy old lady--in The Curious Savage. You would not have believed the backlash. I don't think there was a cast member in that show who wanted anything to do with me, and the director made it worse by making me an example. The other players kept blowing their lines, but I kept nailing mine. (I was a freshman. They told me to memorize my lines. I did. Silly me.) As the director went on and on about how I was just a lowly freshman, but someone who could manage to memorize the part, the other players killed me with their eyes. Laser beams and hot pokers could not have hurt as much.
Then the morning of dress rehearsal, I woke up and couldn't speak. My voice was gone. My throat was hot, red and prickly, and my vocal cords felt about the size of those styrofoam noodle things you can play with in your pool. I tried. Really. I wanted to speak. This was not me trying to get in good with my castmates by faking vulnerabiliIty. I could not speak. Period.
My director freaked out. The school was small enough that we did not assign understudies. I had to go on that stage and I had to squeak out my role. The show must go on.
Dress rehearsal was a disaster. I could see the director in the audience, clenching her fists and shaking her head. She wandered through the auditorium through the whole performance, listening here, listening there. I couldn't be heard past the second row. On the breaks, she would feed me hot tea, rub my shoulder and give me a one-armed hug. "Just get lots of rest," she said. "Get better."
Opening night, I got to the stage behind the curtain, and croaked out a greeting to the cast, who just shook their heads sadly at me. Some rolled their eyes and walked away. The director shrugged and said, "Do the best you can." They left me to it.
The lights came up. The show went on. I remember that part of what I was supposed to do was circle the stage, pacing very deliberately. I think for my first few lines, I croaked and I could see the audience straining toward me. Then I got the cue for my first big line. "What are you doing?"
"Wearing the carpet out evenly," I said, in a perfectly normal and projected voice. The audience burst out laughing. My castmate and I stared at each other for a second. The laughter gave us a second to recover. Then we gulped, started in and went back to the work of acting.
My voice was perfectly normal for the rest of the show. And every show after that.
Until the winter, when it happened again. This time, the director didn't freak out, but she told me to rest and relax, and when I started the show with a normal voice, she just grinned at me. It became a running joke: Dawn's dress rehearsal laryngitis again.
I was in eight plays, one for every semester of high school, and I lost and regained my voice for each play. It was like a ritual; I would develop laryngitis, step onto the stage opening night, and kill the audience dead. Every single time.
I didn't have a conscious awareness of stage fright, but my body manifested it nonetheless. I just had to force myself through it, and then I was fine.
I think the same thing is happening now, but my body or my stupid brain doesn't know how to try to derail this thing I'm on. This sadness, this possible depression, is my dress rehearsal laryngitis. I think that some part of me believes that I will give up and run away before the end. I've done it before. Oh, I've flamed out spectacularly in school before. I swear you could have watched me and heard the whistling sound of my meteor-like fall and the explosion when I hit the ground.
I just have to get to that big line. I have to get up on stage and speak my line. That's all I have to do, and I will be okay. Maybe not ecstatic--but I will be okay.
That's all.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Intellectual crushes
Whenever I meet a beautiful mind, I die a little bit inside. Happily. Part of me just rejoices that this lovely mind exists and is working, because I run into a greater number of ugly minds every day. It's like the sun breaking through clouds in streams--is there really anything more beautiful than a Jacob's Ladder at the end of a stormy day?
I call them my intellectual crushes. I'm definitely crushing on these people, but when you use that word "crush," people get uncomfortable. The word "crush" suggests all those teenage hormones and confused desires, and while at my age, my hormones are probably working toward the Big Storm and Final Quiet after, my desires are much more focused. Down to one person particularly, if you know what I mean. So what happens is that the beautiful mind reveals itself, and I stop, stare and go into starry-eyed teenager mode. I'm sure my face is saying, "Hello! I love you! May I please pet your lovely brain?"
Some people don't take this well. In fact, I would say that most don't. In our society, so much criticism, violent disagreement and manipulation fly about that people are mostly defensive. When someone is nice to us, often the first thing we ask ourselves is, "That's weird. What do they want?" Convincing us that nothing is wanted is not easy, since most people do want something.
Also, since I no longer am a starry-eyed teenager but a starry-eyed middle-aged woman (did you feel that cringe? C'mon, admit you felt that cringe. You are creeped out by my middle-agedness), the reaction tends toward deeper suspicion. "What does that crazy old lady want? God, I hope it's not me." I'm sure that I would get a much more positive reaction if I were still, say, 22 and adorable, as I was once upon a time.
Wouldn't it be fun to hand someone a card that says, "You are amazing and I am in love with your brain. Please keep using it like that." And then walk away? Sure, we can say these things, and if we are particularly charismatic, we can get away with it. Those of us who aren't particularly charismatic need something other than starry eyes to communicate that affection.
For the most part, I just don't communicate the affection, or at least I think I don't. I don't say things to the people directly; I just try to participate in conversations and hope I don't sound like the Big Storm and Final Quiet are taking place in the next three minutes. But I find myself talking about these people to other people, and then....well, I'm sure it gets back to the crushes. Let's put it this way: when one of your professors is aware of your intellectual crush without even being told, is a friend and colleague of that crush, and brings up the crush every single class period, referring to him as "your friend," you pretty much know you're screwed.
You can put any face you want on it, but your intellectual crush is only getting the crush part, not the intellectual modifier.
What I'd like to do is go to each of those intellectual crushes, tell them they are superstars and that it has been a huge pleasure and great gift hanging out with them in classrooms and the like, and that I will miss them when I leave. All while holding on to the arm of my wonderful boyfriend and mostly looking up into his eyes, so they can see who my real crush is, the total package, brains, body, beard and gigantic, all encompassing heart.
Maybe then, I won't be so creepy.
Then again, maybe if I just used my own brain more, I could strive for more equal footing....
I call them my intellectual crushes. I'm definitely crushing on these people, but when you use that word "crush," people get uncomfortable. The word "crush" suggests all those teenage hormones and confused desires, and while at my age, my hormones are probably working toward the Big Storm and Final Quiet after, my desires are much more focused. Down to one person particularly, if you know what I mean. So what happens is that the beautiful mind reveals itself, and I stop, stare and go into starry-eyed teenager mode. I'm sure my face is saying, "Hello! I love you! May I please pet your lovely brain?"
Some people don't take this well. In fact, I would say that most don't. In our society, so much criticism, violent disagreement and manipulation fly about that people are mostly defensive. When someone is nice to us, often the first thing we ask ourselves is, "That's weird. What do they want?" Convincing us that nothing is wanted is not easy, since most people do want something.
Also, since I no longer am a starry-eyed teenager but a starry-eyed middle-aged woman (did you feel that cringe? C'mon, admit you felt that cringe. You are creeped out by my middle-agedness), the reaction tends toward deeper suspicion. "What does that crazy old lady want? God, I hope it's not me." I'm sure that I would get a much more positive reaction if I were still, say, 22 and adorable, as I was once upon a time.
Wouldn't it be fun to hand someone a card that says, "You are amazing and I am in love with your brain. Please keep using it like that." And then walk away? Sure, we can say these things, and if we are particularly charismatic, we can get away with it. Those of us who aren't particularly charismatic need something other than starry eyes to communicate that affection.
For the most part, I just don't communicate the affection, or at least I think I don't. I don't say things to the people directly; I just try to participate in conversations and hope I don't sound like the Big Storm and Final Quiet are taking place in the next three minutes. But I find myself talking about these people to other people, and then....well, I'm sure it gets back to the crushes. Let's put it this way: when one of your professors is aware of your intellectual crush without even being told, is a friend and colleague of that crush, and brings up the crush every single class period, referring to him as "your friend," you pretty much know you're screwed.
You can put any face you want on it, but your intellectual crush is only getting the crush part, not the intellectual modifier.
What I'd like to do is go to each of those intellectual crushes, tell them they are superstars and that it has been a huge pleasure and great gift hanging out with them in classrooms and the like, and that I will miss them when I leave. All while holding on to the arm of my wonderful boyfriend and mostly looking up into his eyes, so they can see who my real crush is, the total package, brains, body, beard and gigantic, all encompassing heart.
Maybe then, I won't be so creepy.
Then again, maybe if I just used my own brain more, I could strive for more equal footing....
Open letter
Dear Conservative Person on my Facebook,
Let me start by saying that I never really knew you in high school, because you attended some years after I had graduated. I accepted your friend request to be nice because I did graduate with your sister (sadly, she and I never got along--we competed too much for the same things and she just plain annoyed the shit out of me).
However, your post today has put me out of patience with you. When you use the "so simple a Caveman can understand it," argument, but substitute "liberal" for "Caveman," you make it clear that your only point is to belittle others to make yourself big. So far you've shown me you have no practice with logical arguments, nor interest in learning any. Your sources are abysmal. You have no idea what peer-reviewed articles are and you obtain your information only from people who agree with you. Anyone who agrees with you, no matter how slapdash and misspelled his webpage is.
You profess to be an evangelical Christian. This makes me laugh bitterly, because you don't have any good news for anyone, and your worship of money belies your "absolute" faith. Your behavior smears other Christians who really do live their faith and don't use it as an excuse to parade their fears and hatreds and bully others. It's a good thing I know lots of those, or I'd wash my hands of the whole religion as well.
I am done with you. I should have known better than to accept your request, since after all, you are related to someone who used to make me claw at my own face in despair of humanity. She, however, was just annoying. Your willful ignorance and arrogance are dangerous. Don't pray for me--save those for yourself. I have a feeling that someone you've been using to justify your hatreds is going to have something to say to you someday, and you're not going to like it much.
Good luck with that.
Me
Let me start by saying that I never really knew you in high school, because you attended some years after I had graduated. I accepted your friend request to be nice because I did graduate with your sister (sadly, she and I never got along--we competed too much for the same things and she just plain annoyed the shit out of me).
However, your post today has put me out of patience with you. When you use the "so simple a Caveman can understand it," argument, but substitute "liberal" for "Caveman," you make it clear that your only point is to belittle others to make yourself big. So far you've shown me you have no practice with logical arguments, nor interest in learning any. Your sources are abysmal. You have no idea what peer-reviewed articles are and you obtain your information only from people who agree with you. Anyone who agrees with you, no matter how slapdash and misspelled his webpage is.
You profess to be an evangelical Christian. This makes me laugh bitterly, because you don't have any good news for anyone, and your worship of money belies your "absolute" faith. Your behavior smears other Christians who really do live their faith and don't use it as an excuse to parade their fears and hatreds and bully others. It's a good thing I know lots of those, or I'd wash my hands of the whole religion as well.
I am done with you. I should have known better than to accept your request, since after all, you are related to someone who used to make me claw at my own face in despair of humanity. She, however, was just annoying. Your willful ignorance and arrogance are dangerous. Don't pray for me--save those for yourself. I have a feeling that someone you've been using to justify your hatreds is going to have something to say to you someday, and you're not going to like it much.
Good luck with that.
Me
Thursday, May 20, 2010
I guess philosophy and my education have ruined me
On Facebook, I just read the following exchange:
RN: Wow, you have to love "tit for tat" politics! This is awesome, and would be even better if Arizona follows through and throws the switch. Maybe the LA city council should learn to either negotiate or just mind their own business. (Sorry Rebecca, I hope your lights dont go off!) Link to Fox News Story
RN: Wow, you have to love "tit for tat" politics! This is awesome, and would be even better if Arizona follows through and throws the switch. Maybe the LA city council should learn to either negotiate or just mind their own business. (Sorry Rebecca, I hope your lights dont go off!) Link to Fox News Story
RB: I'd be perfectly happy if the lights went out. People should stand for what is right whether your lights go out or not!
CV: I saw that on the news and laughed my ass off.
CW: Hahahahahhahahhahhaha....
Every single one of these people is an evangelical Christian I knew from high school. The last one there is the one I defriended from the crazy "we'll all have to get RFID implants" rumor from the beginning of the quarter. I am quite close to getting rid of the rest of them all from my FB account.
I would like to know when Christianity became all about hate and smug self-righteousness. I would like to know when Jesus said it was okay for people to be acting like this. I have been looking in the Bible--I've read the New Testament at least four times--and I really don't remember seeing anything about that in there. Quite the opposite, in fact. I know a lot of Christians who aren't like this, people who don't stand in such obvious judgment of everyone else, and those are, at this point, the only ones left who give me any hope for the religion whatsoever.
The ones like the above are the worst sort of witnesses possible. I have my own philosophical issues with Christianity (let's just say Kierkegaard's arguments fail hugely for me), but it's people like the above that make me see the religion as not merely not for me, but poisonous in general. I only hold back from writing off the whole thing in my head because of people that I know who really live the words of Christ.
These people? Totally aren't. Is there anything in Jesus' actual words that justifies this behavior? Really?
(Am I holding Christians to a higher standard than myself? Maybe I am. I'm just holding them to the standards they are, from their own religious texts, supposed to be upholding. Is that wrong?)
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Introversion and Isolation
First of all, introversion is not shyness. Let's get that straight immediately. Introversion is about needing to be alone so that the mental and emotional energy stores can be replenished. Being around other people constantly is draining to an introvert, often to the point of exhaustion. Parties are murder on an introvert.
The problem with being an introvert is that human beings are social animals and even an introvert needs to be social. Complete isolation is not good even for an introvert. Once the energy stores are replenished, it's time to go back out into society and interact again.
I am an introvert. This may or may not be obvious. If you've confused introversion and shyness in the past and you have seen me in person, you may have assumed I am an extrovert. I'm not. I have no real fear of people anymore. I used to, but I've come to realize I feared their draining effect on me, not who they are or what they represented.
Lately, I've been noticing that I'm missing a lot of social cues, as though I were autistic and not merely introverted. I'm picking up on the cues after I've missed them, but that's like the French and their l'esprit de l'escalier, the wit of the staircase, when you think of that fantastic comeback too late to do you any good. People have been making gentle overtures to me and I have not been giving them the responses they're seeking. Give enough confusing or strange responses and people won't make those overtures anymore.
And I have been utterly isolated.
Now I'm not going to go into self-pity here: oh, woe is me, I'm a freak and nobody likes me. No, no. Not there. I am a sort of freak and a lot of people see it and agree that I am, but I'm not lamenting that. I've lived so long with my freakishness that I've settled into it and like it to some degree.
What I don't like is being unkind to other people, intentionally or not. I don't like hurting others, and I never mean to hurt anyone. I tend to rattle on stupidly about things, and I rebuff overtures as gently as I can when I am exhausted or they confuse me, but I don't like to hurt people or shut them out.
Lately, I think I might be hurting people, that I might not be as gentle as I think I am. My problem is that my job--serving tables in a sports bar--is designed to be done by extroverts. For six to ten hours a day, I have to fake being an extrovert. I have to dig past my day-to-day energy stores and put on some sparkle as well as come up with some skills.
I'm running on a deficit. So when people come and talk to me now, my responses are off, either self-protective or a bit false, the habitual face I wear for work: "Hi, I'm friendly, you're friendly, it's all good, ha ha, nice to see you, bye!" Which is about as real as some of the washed five dollar bills reprinted as fifties someone keeps trying to pass in the casino lately.
I'm not sure how to resolve this. Even an introvert needs someone to talk to about her day. Even an introvert needs at least one person in the world to get past the "ha-ha, bye" and see who she really is. My boyfriend, who usually does this for me, is in Phoenix. Some of the others are drifting away from me. I haven't talked, really talked, in a couple of years with the woman I consider my sister in all ways but the biological. Another has been texting and emailing me, but I've not had the time to sit down and talk to her. I've always been running.
What I need to do is stop, write or call these people, apologize for my shitty behavior, and be real for a while (and for a change!). Just the thought of doing this, though, makes me teary with fear. Human contact in this way requires an initial drain before it gives a refill. Yes, being real with someone else will replenish both of you, but you have to get past that initial drain first. I'm feeling so close to the end of my reserves that I don't know that I have the ability to do that right now.
So I remain in my isolation for a bit longer and hope for the best. Not a fun thing, even for an introvert.
The problem with being an introvert is that human beings are social animals and even an introvert needs to be social. Complete isolation is not good even for an introvert. Once the energy stores are replenished, it's time to go back out into society and interact again.
I am an introvert. This may or may not be obvious. If you've confused introversion and shyness in the past and you have seen me in person, you may have assumed I am an extrovert. I'm not. I have no real fear of people anymore. I used to, but I've come to realize I feared their draining effect on me, not who they are or what they represented.
Lately, I've been noticing that I'm missing a lot of social cues, as though I were autistic and not merely introverted. I'm picking up on the cues after I've missed them, but that's like the French and their l'esprit de l'escalier, the wit of the staircase, when you think of that fantastic comeback too late to do you any good. People have been making gentle overtures to me and I have not been giving them the responses they're seeking. Give enough confusing or strange responses and people won't make those overtures anymore.
And I have been utterly isolated.
Now I'm not going to go into self-pity here: oh, woe is me, I'm a freak and nobody likes me. No, no. Not there. I am a sort of freak and a lot of people see it and agree that I am, but I'm not lamenting that. I've lived so long with my freakishness that I've settled into it and like it to some degree.
What I don't like is being unkind to other people, intentionally or not. I don't like hurting others, and I never mean to hurt anyone. I tend to rattle on stupidly about things, and I rebuff overtures as gently as I can when I am exhausted or they confuse me, but I don't like to hurt people or shut them out.
Lately, I think I might be hurting people, that I might not be as gentle as I think I am. My problem is that my job--serving tables in a sports bar--is designed to be done by extroverts. For six to ten hours a day, I have to fake being an extrovert. I have to dig past my day-to-day energy stores and put on some sparkle as well as come up with some skills.
I'm running on a deficit. So when people come and talk to me now, my responses are off, either self-protective or a bit false, the habitual face I wear for work: "Hi, I'm friendly, you're friendly, it's all good, ha ha, nice to see you, bye!" Which is about as real as some of the washed five dollar bills reprinted as fifties someone keeps trying to pass in the casino lately.
I'm not sure how to resolve this. Even an introvert needs someone to talk to about her day. Even an introvert needs at least one person in the world to get past the "ha-ha, bye" and see who she really is. My boyfriend, who usually does this for me, is in Phoenix. Some of the others are drifting away from me. I haven't talked, really talked, in a couple of years with the woman I consider my sister in all ways but the biological. Another has been texting and emailing me, but I've not had the time to sit down and talk to her. I've always been running.
What I need to do is stop, write or call these people, apologize for my shitty behavior, and be real for a while (and for a change!). Just the thought of doing this, though, makes me teary with fear. Human contact in this way requires an initial drain before it gives a refill. Yes, being real with someone else will replenish both of you, but you have to get past that initial drain first. I'm feeling so close to the end of my reserves that I don't know that I have the ability to do that right now.
So I remain in my isolation for a bit longer and hope for the best. Not a fun thing, even for an introvert.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Oversimplifications all over the place
(If philosophy bores you, just scroll down for the fun stuff.)
This quarter, I'm taking History of Western Contemporary Philosophy (or maybe it's History of Contemporary Western Philosophy) with Terry MacMullan, and I love it. I love every class and I wish I'd taken a philosophy degree instead. (Too late now!)
It's not my first Philosophy class. I took Ethics at NIC with Laura Templeman, and she said in one line what had summed up my entire experience in life: "Absolutism just isn't very helpful."
I swear you could have seen the light bulb glow above my head. I had been struggling with a deep anger against evangelism, both conservative and liberal politics, and closed-mindedness in general. She had quietly voiced what was wrong with all three: absolutist thinking.
Now note she didn't say it was wrong to be an absolutist (I did, sorry). She said it wasn't helpful. Another student asked if that meant that everything was relative, and she said relativism wasn't helpful, either. She said that there are a lot of gray areas in life, and they need to be approached with a pluralistic point of view. No one system or belief can have all the answers, all the time. It doesn't hurt at all to try different systems until you see what works.
This concept was reinforced by taking Logic and Critical Thinking with Ian, also at NIC. Only now, armed with some knowledge of logical fallacies, I can say what's bothering me about someone's argument. Whenever somebody tells me, "This is is ONLY WAY this will work," or "Do this or else!" or "Jesus is the ONLY WAY," my brain immediately says, "Nope: false dichotomy." I start looking for what I'm not being told. I step back from the situation and usually, I can find a third, fourth, or even fifth option.
(The Jesus thing is even more complicated than false dichotomy for me. It also involves what appear to be false premises and a violation of Kant's Categorical Imperatives. That would take another whole post on its own. Let's leave it at, "It might work for you but it doesn't work for me at all," and just move on, okay?)
Yesterday, Dr. MacMullan started the section on Pragmatism, with Peirce and James, and he said that the beauty of that school is that it says sooner or later, you have to grow up and let go of absolutist thinking. I put both hands over my mouth to stop the squeals of joy. He said that Pragmatism focuses on what works and what doesn't. It's about what leads you to right action, always action. You don't step back and look for abstract truth--you recognize what's going to get you through life. It's a complete break from the two absolutist schools that have dominated philosophy: the Skeptics (if you can't know something absolutely, you can't know it at all) and Certainty (we can know everything absolutely).
Pragmatists see truth as a moving target. It is both indeterminate and intelligible. You can't know everything, but you can know enough to do what you need.
It's back to Laura: absolutism is just not helpful.
Anyway, as a cookie to you for letting me ramble on about things probably only I care about, here is my summation of the philosophers we have studied so far this quarter in one or two lines.
Kant: Do your duty and speak your mind. Just not at the same time.
Hegel: Everything is moving toward perfection: you're just a little piece of God's mind.
Kierkegaard: Everything sucks, even God, but he's way bigger than us so we just need to do what he says, even if it sounds crazy. (Also, Hegel is an idiot.)
Nietzsche: Stop whining, all of you! Be men! Be strong men and noble men and stop making yourselves out to be great because you're merciful. You're WEAK! Weak, whiny babies! (You like my cape? I made it.)
Feuerbach: Hegel's not exactly an idiot, Kierkegaard. He's just got it backward. Materials drive ideas, not the other way around.
Marx: What F-Man said! Only more so! Workers unite! We will take it all over and then have little committees that will control everything just until we can get absolute democracy going and then those guys will step aside....um, wait....
Bentham: Measure your happy and everyone else's happy, and do whichever one is bigger. (Can someone wheel me out of here? I think I'm melting.)
Wollstonecraft: *deep sigh* Look, all I'm saying is that if I'd had Latin, Greek, logic and rhetoric from the age of three like you men, I'd be able to reason as well as you. Duh!
Mill: Some happies are better than other happies, not just bigger. And sometimes, you have to work for them, which kinda sucks, but actually makes them even better. So, um....just do lots of stuff and figure out what makes you better happy, maybe?
Peirce: OMG, people, grow up and stop thinking you know everything already. You know enough, okay? And you can always know more, but you can't know everything. Now excuse me. My face hurts and I need another injection.
It helps me keep them straight in my head.
This quarter, I'm taking History of Western Contemporary Philosophy (or maybe it's History of Contemporary Western Philosophy) with Terry MacMullan, and I love it. I love every class and I wish I'd taken a philosophy degree instead. (Too late now!)
It's not my first Philosophy class. I took Ethics at NIC with Laura Templeman, and she said in one line what had summed up my entire experience in life: "Absolutism just isn't very helpful."
I swear you could have seen the light bulb glow above my head. I had been struggling with a deep anger against evangelism, both conservative and liberal politics, and closed-mindedness in general. She had quietly voiced what was wrong with all three: absolutist thinking.
Now note she didn't say it was wrong to be an absolutist (I did, sorry). She said it wasn't helpful. Another student asked if that meant that everything was relative, and she said relativism wasn't helpful, either. She said that there are a lot of gray areas in life, and they need to be approached with a pluralistic point of view. No one system or belief can have all the answers, all the time. It doesn't hurt at all to try different systems until you see what works.
This concept was reinforced by taking Logic and Critical Thinking with Ian, also at NIC. Only now, armed with some knowledge of logical fallacies, I can say what's bothering me about someone's argument. Whenever somebody tells me, "This is is ONLY WAY this will work," or "Do this or else!" or "Jesus is the ONLY WAY," my brain immediately says, "Nope: false dichotomy." I start looking for what I'm not being told. I step back from the situation and usually, I can find a third, fourth, or even fifth option.
(The Jesus thing is even more complicated than false dichotomy for me. It also involves what appear to be false premises and a violation of Kant's Categorical Imperatives. That would take another whole post on its own. Let's leave it at, "It might work for you but it doesn't work for me at all," and just move on, okay?)
Yesterday, Dr. MacMullan started the section on Pragmatism, with Peirce and James, and he said that the beauty of that school is that it says sooner or later, you have to grow up and let go of absolutist thinking. I put both hands over my mouth to stop the squeals of joy. He said that Pragmatism focuses on what works and what doesn't. It's about what leads you to right action, always action. You don't step back and look for abstract truth--you recognize what's going to get you through life. It's a complete break from the two absolutist schools that have dominated philosophy: the Skeptics (if you can't know something absolutely, you can't know it at all) and Certainty (we can know everything absolutely).
Pragmatists see truth as a moving target. It is both indeterminate and intelligible. You can't know everything, but you can know enough to do what you need.
It's back to Laura: absolutism is just not helpful.
Anyway, as a cookie to you for letting me ramble on about things probably only I care about, here is my summation of the philosophers we have studied so far this quarter in one or two lines.
Kant: Do your duty and speak your mind. Just not at the same time.
Hegel: Everything is moving toward perfection: you're just a little piece of God's mind.
Kierkegaard: Everything sucks, even God, but he's way bigger than us so we just need to do what he says, even if it sounds crazy. (Also, Hegel is an idiot.)
Nietzsche: Stop whining, all of you! Be men! Be strong men and noble men and stop making yourselves out to be great because you're merciful. You're WEAK! Weak, whiny babies! (You like my cape? I made it.)
Feuerbach: Hegel's not exactly an idiot, Kierkegaard. He's just got it backward. Materials drive ideas, not the other way around.
Marx: What F-Man said! Only more so! Workers unite! We will take it all over and then have little committees that will control everything just until we can get absolute democracy going and then those guys will step aside....um, wait....
Bentham: Measure your happy and everyone else's happy, and do whichever one is bigger. (Can someone wheel me out of here? I think I'm melting.)
Wollstonecraft: *deep sigh* Look, all I'm saying is that if I'd had Latin, Greek, logic and rhetoric from the age of three like you men, I'd be able to reason as well as you. Duh!
Mill: Some happies are better than other happies, not just bigger. And sometimes, you have to work for them, which kinda sucks, but actually makes them even better. So, um....just do lots of stuff and figure out what makes you better happy, maybe?
Peirce: OMG, people, grow up and stop thinking you know everything already. You know enough, okay? And you can always know more, but you can't know everything. Now excuse me. My face hurts and I need another injection.
It helps me keep them straight in my head.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Safe Surprises
I can't remember when I first noticed that all American entertainment follows strict formulas. Even indie films have a formula, more or less.
Take, for example, any reality show. It always has a formula. Let's use "What Not to Wear," with Clinton and Stacy, because the formula is so obvious and so strict that it's easy to demonstrate.
The show is half an hour long. The first segment introduces the victim, who has usually been nominated by her friends. Stacy and Clinton pounce upon the victim in the presence of the friends and humiliate her gently but thoroughly. Next they take her to a place where she is even more deeply humilated by watching secret videos her friends have made of her poor choice in attire. Stacy and Clinton take her to the studio and put her in a room that is encircled in mirrors. She wears her favorite clothing and tries to defend it to them. They disparage these choices and point out all the reasons she should not be wearing them.
Next they have her bring all her clothing in on racks and they mock each piece to her. They toss most of the wardrobe in a large garbage can, and inevitably, the victim will clutch at some favorite pieces, almost in tears, and try to rescue them. Stacy and Clinton will fight her on this. They give her a sum of money (if I remember correctly, it is a thousand dollars) to spend on a new wardrobe according to their specifications, half one day and half the next. The victim attempts to follow directions but doesn't understand them or rebels against them entirely, often backsliding into old habits. Stacy and Clinton watch the video of this and mock and roll their eyes.
Stacy and Clinton take over the shopping the second day, returning the rebel pieces and poor choices. They try to make the victim understand why she should see herself differently than she does. Finally, the victim is placed in the hands of a stylist and a makeup artist. The hairstylist is often the most heartbreaking segment because there is nothing quite so personal as hairstyle, and this is the moment the victim is completely rubbed out and the new person put into her place. Inevitably the stylist cuts off a vast amount of hair and colors it something completely different.
The final segment shows the victim fully transformed into Stacy and Clinton's image. The new person is almost entirely unrecognizable from the old. Best of all, she is joyous and grateful for the transformation. She often apologizes for her rebellion and is ritually forgiven by Stacy and Clinton.
Are any of you just a little sick to your stomachs right now? The worst of it is, I love this show. I really love this show and I adore Stacy and Clinton, though I really hate Stacy's "shut UP!" catchphrase. I love the show, but I'm also horrified by it, and not for the reasons they would like me to be horrified. This show is more than a little bit evil. It's practically Orwellian.
But what I really wanted to show you was the structure. It follows a very specific arc, as does every sitcom, drama, action adventure, cartoon and newscast in this country. In fact, if the art form doesn't follow the formula, the audience is disturbed and confused.
I remember back in the 80s watching Un Coeur en Hiver and being completely confused because the action didn't follow a specific arc and I couldn't fully comprehend the motivations of the characters. The latter bothered me more than anything, because at the time, I was a theatre major and studying Stanislavski, prophet of Method Acting. All I remember about it was there was a cellist, played by quite possibly the most beautiful girl in the world at the time, Emanuelle Béart. People did things, people said things, they got mad at each other, they got back together, they split up. Things just happened. To a mind trained on the narrative arc, things happened, but nothing happened. Nothing made sense.
Now I can look back at myself and see there's something a little bit horseshit about "narrative arc." Human beings don't have narrative arcs in their lives. They do things, they flounder, they wander around--most don't even know why they do the things they do, and if you ask them, they'll tell you not what you want to hear, but what they want you to believe about themselves. It's very much like Un Coeur en Hiver.
What we often demand from a story is the structure we've had socialized into us from the days of Mr. Rogers (okay, Barney for you youngsters). We want the shoes to be changed, the coat taken off, the sweater put on, the descent into the world of make believe, the lesson learned, the return to the real world, the gentle socialization of the neighborhood, the shoes changed again, the sweater taken off and the coat put back on, the song and the goodbye. This is our arc, and we will be confused and disrupted by changing it.
Here's my thought: maybe we're supposed to be disturbed. Maybe it's a good idea for us to be disturbed. Maybe it's a good idea for us to be shaken from our narrative trance and forced to see what is, not what we want each other to believe. Maybe the narrative arc is pure horseshit. Maybe, in a way, it's a hypnotism, and we're just batteries for a social and political parasite-tyrant. Do you want the red pill or the blue pill?
Are you ever disturbed by the narrative arc, or bored? Do you ever feel like escaping it? But when you do, what do you feel? Tell me; I'm listening.
Take, for example, any reality show. It always has a formula. Let's use "What Not to Wear," with Clinton and Stacy, because the formula is so obvious and so strict that it's easy to demonstrate.
The show is half an hour long. The first segment introduces the victim, who has usually been nominated by her friends. Stacy and Clinton pounce upon the victim in the presence of the friends and humiliate her gently but thoroughly. Next they take her to a place where she is even more deeply humilated by watching secret videos her friends have made of her poor choice in attire. Stacy and Clinton take her to the studio and put her in a room that is encircled in mirrors. She wears her favorite clothing and tries to defend it to them. They disparage these choices and point out all the reasons she should not be wearing them.
Next they have her bring all her clothing in on racks and they mock each piece to her. They toss most of the wardrobe in a large garbage can, and inevitably, the victim will clutch at some favorite pieces, almost in tears, and try to rescue them. Stacy and Clinton will fight her on this. They give her a sum of money (if I remember correctly, it is a thousand dollars) to spend on a new wardrobe according to their specifications, half one day and half the next. The victim attempts to follow directions but doesn't understand them or rebels against them entirely, often backsliding into old habits. Stacy and Clinton watch the video of this and mock and roll their eyes.
Stacy and Clinton take over the shopping the second day, returning the rebel pieces and poor choices. They try to make the victim understand why she should see herself differently than she does. Finally, the victim is placed in the hands of a stylist and a makeup artist. The hairstylist is often the most heartbreaking segment because there is nothing quite so personal as hairstyle, and this is the moment the victim is completely rubbed out and the new person put into her place. Inevitably the stylist cuts off a vast amount of hair and colors it something completely different.
The final segment shows the victim fully transformed into Stacy and Clinton's image. The new person is almost entirely unrecognizable from the old. Best of all, she is joyous and grateful for the transformation. She often apologizes for her rebellion and is ritually forgiven by Stacy and Clinton.
Are any of you just a little sick to your stomachs right now? The worst of it is, I love this show. I really love this show and I adore Stacy and Clinton, though I really hate Stacy's "shut UP!" catchphrase. I love the show, but I'm also horrified by it, and not for the reasons they would like me to be horrified. This show is more than a little bit evil. It's practically Orwellian.
But what I really wanted to show you was the structure. It follows a very specific arc, as does every sitcom, drama, action adventure, cartoon and newscast in this country. In fact, if the art form doesn't follow the formula, the audience is disturbed and confused.
I remember back in the 80s watching Un Coeur en Hiver and being completely confused because the action didn't follow a specific arc and I couldn't fully comprehend the motivations of the characters. The latter bothered me more than anything, because at the time, I was a theatre major and studying Stanislavski, prophet of Method Acting. All I remember about it was there was a cellist, played by quite possibly the most beautiful girl in the world at the time, Emanuelle Béart. People did things, people said things, they got mad at each other, they got back together, they split up. Things just happened. To a mind trained on the narrative arc, things happened, but nothing happened. Nothing made sense.
Now I can look back at myself and see there's something a little bit horseshit about "narrative arc." Human beings don't have narrative arcs in their lives. They do things, they flounder, they wander around--most don't even know why they do the things they do, and if you ask them, they'll tell you not what you want to hear, but what they want you to believe about themselves. It's very much like Un Coeur en Hiver.
What we often demand from a story is the structure we've had socialized into us from the days of Mr. Rogers (okay, Barney for you youngsters). We want the shoes to be changed, the coat taken off, the sweater put on, the descent into the world of make believe, the lesson learned, the return to the real world, the gentle socialization of the neighborhood, the shoes changed again, the sweater taken off and the coat put back on, the song and the goodbye. This is our arc, and we will be confused and disrupted by changing it.
Here's my thought: maybe we're supposed to be disturbed. Maybe it's a good idea for us to be disturbed. Maybe it's a good idea for us to be shaken from our narrative trance and forced to see what is, not what we want each other to believe. Maybe the narrative arc is pure horseshit. Maybe, in a way, it's a hypnotism, and we're just batteries for a social and political parasite-tyrant. Do you want the red pill or the blue pill?
Are you ever disturbed by the narrative arc, or bored? Do you ever feel like escaping it? But when you do, what do you feel? Tell me; I'm listening.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Attempting moral improvement
My boyfriend had a health scare: he'd been having pains in his chest and been feeling really bad. He was imagining everything from lung cancer (he smokes) to heart attack (he's got a beer belly). He finally did go to the doctor, and it turns out he has reflux disease. Now, don't scoff. Untreated reflux leads to esophageal erosion and even cancer, and it can be extremely painful.
The scare has shaken him out of some of his habits. He's been off the smokes now for half a month, he's cut down on his drinking, and he's utterly amazed me by doing the one thing he used to swear he would never do. He's running two miles every other day. He's told me before that he hates running because he feels awkward and uncoordinated when he does it. He feels as through none of his muscles want to work in concert and he should be wearing a helmet and one of those big retainers you can see on the outside of your face.
But he's doing it, because he wants to be alive.
So I am following suit. And it's wrong of me, because if I were left to my devices, I would not change. I'm changing to keep up with him, so that he doesn't leave me behind. I'm afraid he'll turn around and look at me and think, "Well, I've changed and she's still in the same rut. Maybe it's time for me to move on."
But if I change only on the outside, and resent it, it's not real change. If we grow apart, it's going to happen no matter what I do to try to stop it. People change on the inside. It's when the insides don't match, not the outsides, that people grow apart and separate. I'm the one now having the scare, but the only thing I can do is put my shoes on and get back to running, throw away the smokes and try to regain some discipline over my life.
I keep hoping that if I do, I'll want to keep doing it. I keep hoping that it will make me happy and I will feel better, more secure.
Something still tells me I'm fooling myself.
The scare has shaken him out of some of his habits. He's been off the smokes now for half a month, he's cut down on his drinking, and he's utterly amazed me by doing the one thing he used to swear he would never do. He's running two miles every other day. He's told me before that he hates running because he feels awkward and uncoordinated when he does it. He feels as through none of his muscles want to work in concert and he should be wearing a helmet and one of those big retainers you can see on the outside of your face.
But he's doing it, because he wants to be alive.
So I am following suit. And it's wrong of me, because if I were left to my devices, I would not change. I'm changing to keep up with him, so that he doesn't leave me behind. I'm afraid he'll turn around and look at me and think, "Well, I've changed and she's still in the same rut. Maybe it's time for me to move on."
But if I change only on the outside, and resent it, it's not real change. If we grow apart, it's going to happen no matter what I do to try to stop it. People change on the inside. It's when the insides don't match, not the outsides, that people grow apart and separate. I'm the one now having the scare, but the only thing I can do is put my shoes on and get back to running, throw away the smokes and try to regain some discipline over my life.
I keep hoping that if I do, I'll want to keep doing it. I keep hoping that it will make me happy and I will feel better, more secure.
Something still tells me I'm fooling myself.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Salad Days for Recruitment
A friend of mine just got turned down for re-enlistment in the Army. Apparently, he had an old juvie record and it permanently disqualified him for service, despite having served seven years in Kosovo and Iraq. These records used to be considered sealed, which is how he got into the service in the first place, but the laws have recently changed so that background checks now include them.
His excellent service in those seven years doesn't change anything, either. The recruiter told him that right now, they have more enlistees than they need. There's no work, so everyone is enlisting.
I almost couldn't believe that. Weren't all the branches suffering just a year or so ago, and the people already enlisted were having tour after tour and burning out?
Surprise: Army Recruiter guy is right: Recruiting gains in Financial Year 2009. That's a Navy site, but it tells the tale. The weak economy and increased recruitment spending are cited as factors.
Army enlistment requirements: Criminal History
This was pretty interesting. The Army has a reputation, undeserved or no, of taking whoever comes in the door. During lean times, they probably do, to some extent, but right now, they're some people's best option, and they can afford to pick and choose who they want.
I really don't know why they turned down my friend, since he had already served. I wonder if there's something they're not telling him and they're just using a technicality as an excuse. I've seen that with employers before. They don't want someone, but they can't come out and say exactly why. Or they don't want to argue about it. So they focus on a technicality, a little blip in the rules that makes things impossible but doesn't humiliate anyone.
Never mind that 99 times out of a 100 they can ignore that technicality at will....
I don't know if things really happened as above; I wasn't there. I'm only going on hearsay. But I do see the potential for it in the links above.
His excellent service in those seven years doesn't change anything, either. The recruiter told him that right now, they have more enlistees than they need. There's no work, so everyone is enlisting.
I almost couldn't believe that. Weren't all the branches suffering just a year or so ago, and the people already enlisted were having tour after tour and burning out?
Surprise: Army Recruiter guy is right: Recruiting gains in Financial Year 2009. That's a Navy site, but it tells the tale. The weak economy and increased recruitment spending are cited as factors.
Army enlistment requirements: Criminal History
This was pretty interesting. The Army has a reputation, undeserved or no, of taking whoever comes in the door. During lean times, they probably do, to some extent, but right now, they're some people's best option, and they can afford to pick and choose who they want.
I really don't know why they turned down my friend, since he had already served. I wonder if there's something they're not telling him and they're just using a technicality as an excuse. I've seen that with employers before. They don't want someone, but they can't come out and say exactly why. Or they don't want to argue about it. So they focus on a technicality, a little blip in the rules that makes things impossible but doesn't humiliate anyone.
Never mind that 99 times out of a 100 they can ignore that technicality at will....
I don't know if things really happened as above; I wasn't there. I'm only going on hearsay. But I do see the potential for it in the links above.
Friday, April 23, 2010
How many times can a person fall in love?
I almost got married once. I got to the engagement part before I panicked and realized it was not going to work. I didn't feel like a whole person with him. I remember getting to the gaijin house (it was never home) after work and going downstairs to the communal living room. My friend Greg, the Canadian manga artist, was there drinking screwdrivers. He offered me one and asked me questions about myself: what was I doing in Japan and what did I want from the experience? I rattled off my story about how my fiance had always wanted to live in Japan and we were going to be there for five years. Greg stopped me in midsentence. He said that if he had wanted to know about what my fiance wanted, he would have asked him. He was asking me. What did I want?
I froze up. I couldn't answer. I had no idea.
I started crying and had to leave to hide the tears. I had no idea what I wanted. I had no idea why I was in Japan, other than that I had agreed to go because that's where my fiance was going.
I had always thought that I loved him. I now know I didn't. I never had.
I have had other relationships and told men that I loved them. Now I wonder whether I did.
What I feel with Jeff is huge and scary. The biggest difference is that he doesn't fill up the empty spaces in me. He is himself and has his world; I am myself and have my world. It's like a Venn diagram with big circles for both of us and our love is the overlapping part.
I suppose a person can fall in love as many times as necessary, and for me, it's really been just once.
I froze up. I couldn't answer. I had no idea.
I started crying and had to leave to hide the tears. I had no idea what I wanted. I had no idea why I was in Japan, other than that I had agreed to go because that's where my fiance was going.
I had always thought that I loved him. I now know I didn't. I never had.
I have had other relationships and told men that I loved them. Now I wonder whether I did.
What I feel with Jeff is huge and scary. The biggest difference is that he doesn't fill up the empty spaces in me. He is himself and has his world; I am myself and have my world. It's like a Venn diagram with big circles for both of us and our love is the overlapping part.
I suppose a person can fall in love as many times as necessary, and for me, it's really been just once.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Homesick
A little over two years ago, I was on the front porch of the Hope Hotel in Idaho, looking out over Lake Pend Oreille. I was sitting next to Jeff, who was an infrequent patron of the bar. I mostly served food there, so I had never served him, only talked to him in passing, or while we were both indulging our nicotine habits. Servers have a habit of remembering who a person is by what he drinks (we know where the money is), and there were a lot of Jeffs that came in, so we would refer to this particular Jeff as Guinness Jeff.
So Guinness Jeff and I were on the porch together on the peeling white bench, companionably smoking, and somehow, we got around to my leaving that September. I told him I was going to Cheney to get my English degree now that my son was grown up.
"And what will you do with that?"
This is when I give my flippant answer: "Hang it on the wall and admire it." "Make a paper airplane." "Tattoo it on my butt and work at McDonald's." I hate that question. I'm not here to get a degree for a job. I'm here to learn, period. That's all. But Guinness Jeff had never been rude to me, and he had always been respectful, so being flippant to him would just have been arrogant and unkind.
I told him that when I had my degree, I was going to pack the car with clothes, the dog and the cat, and I was going to start driving. It didn't matter which direction I went. I was just going to drive and when I felt like stopping, I would stop. I'd try to work in diners and bars, just enough to pay to eat and stay clean, and I would write. I would stay on the road and write.
I don't think he believed me at first, and I'm sure you don't believe me now, but I meant it. I lived in London for about 10 months. I got a Eurail Pass and stayed in a hostel room worse than a jail cell, and got somewhat better rooms in Brussels and Paris. I flew from London to Bangkok on Aeroflot, the Russian airline, before the Berlin Wall fell. I lived on the beach in Koh Samui back when you could live comfortably on $2 a day. And I stayed in two roach-infested gaijin houses in Tokyo for about 11 months. I don't mean itty bitty roaches. I mean black three-inch fliers that will attack your face.
I was tired of Idaho. I was tired of the conservative politics and the religion. Before the Hotel job, I was an Admissions Clerk at the hospital. One day during the Presidency of George W. Bush, the wife of one of the doctors came in and sat down in one of the booths next to mine and started talking to one of her friends. The two of them were talking about the struggles with Israel and Palestine, and the deaths, and how it was under siege from all these Arab countries. The doctor's wife suddenly started crying. "It's all coming to pass," she said. "The prophecies are coming true. Israel is coming to power, and that means Jesus is coming back. I'm so happy! I can't wait."
I was just getting sick. Honestly, at that point, I wanted Israel obliterated from the earth. I thought maybe, if those prophecies were proven false once and for all, this nonsense would stop. People would stop exulting in other people's suffering because it would no longer be some sign to them that they were right and that other people were wrong, and they were going to heaven and everyone else was going to hell.
I hated Idaho at that point. I listened to people like this every day. Very few of them went as far as the doctor's wife, but you could still hear the sanctimony in their voices. I finally left the hospital job, not because I could get away from these people, but because I needed a night job to go back to school. Once I did, I realized that I could go to school in another state, and I could escape the neoconservative politics and the evangelical Christians.
The night job at the Hotel, waiting tables, put me into contact with different people. I met people with broken lives and addictions. I met people who talked casually of having been in jail, usually for DUIs. I met an artist who set up her studio next to our restaurant and bar. I reconnected with my son's grade school teachers. The publisher of Lost Horse Press was a regular patron. I met musicians and drunks, fishing boat captains and crews. Pool sharks and millionaires who played dice for thousands of dollars spread on the weathered wood of the hundred-year-old bar.
And one night, I sat out again with Guinness Jeff, who I had learned was from Alaska, who had been a carny, a salmon fisherman, a prankster, a roofer and in all kind of trouble. I learned he was a little shy of me, but that after a Jack and Coke (yes, he switched his drink on me), he would loudly declare my praises. And that night, I deliberately left my coat in the server station, sat on the bench with him, lit up my cigarette, hugged myself and shivered. "It's cold tonight," I said. He smiled and hugged me to him.
That was how it began.
I got my wish. I got out of Idaho.
Now I just want to go back.
So Guinness Jeff and I were on the porch together on the peeling white bench, companionably smoking, and somehow, we got around to my leaving that September. I told him I was going to Cheney to get my English degree now that my son was grown up.
"And what will you do with that?"
This is when I give my flippant answer: "Hang it on the wall and admire it." "Make a paper airplane." "Tattoo it on my butt and work at McDonald's." I hate that question. I'm not here to get a degree for a job. I'm here to learn, period. That's all. But Guinness Jeff had never been rude to me, and he had always been respectful, so being flippant to him would just have been arrogant and unkind.
I told him that when I had my degree, I was going to pack the car with clothes, the dog and the cat, and I was going to start driving. It didn't matter which direction I went. I was just going to drive and when I felt like stopping, I would stop. I'd try to work in diners and bars, just enough to pay to eat and stay clean, and I would write. I would stay on the road and write.
I don't think he believed me at first, and I'm sure you don't believe me now, but I meant it. I lived in London for about 10 months. I got a Eurail Pass and stayed in a hostel room worse than a jail cell, and got somewhat better rooms in Brussels and Paris. I flew from London to Bangkok on Aeroflot, the Russian airline, before the Berlin Wall fell. I lived on the beach in Koh Samui back when you could live comfortably on $2 a day. And I stayed in two roach-infested gaijin houses in Tokyo for about 11 months. I don't mean itty bitty roaches. I mean black three-inch fliers that will attack your face.
I was tired of Idaho. I was tired of the conservative politics and the religion. Before the Hotel job, I was an Admissions Clerk at the hospital. One day during the Presidency of George W. Bush, the wife of one of the doctors came in and sat down in one of the booths next to mine and started talking to one of her friends. The two of them were talking about the struggles with Israel and Palestine, and the deaths, and how it was under siege from all these Arab countries. The doctor's wife suddenly started crying. "It's all coming to pass," she said. "The prophecies are coming true. Israel is coming to power, and that means Jesus is coming back. I'm so happy! I can't wait."
I was just getting sick. Honestly, at that point, I wanted Israel obliterated from the earth. I thought maybe, if those prophecies were proven false once and for all, this nonsense would stop. People would stop exulting in other people's suffering because it would no longer be some sign to them that they were right and that other people were wrong, and they were going to heaven and everyone else was going to hell.
I hated Idaho at that point. I listened to people like this every day. Very few of them went as far as the doctor's wife, but you could still hear the sanctimony in their voices. I finally left the hospital job, not because I could get away from these people, but because I needed a night job to go back to school. Once I did, I realized that I could go to school in another state, and I could escape the neoconservative politics and the evangelical Christians.
The night job at the Hotel, waiting tables, put me into contact with different people. I met people with broken lives and addictions. I met people who talked casually of having been in jail, usually for DUIs. I met an artist who set up her studio next to our restaurant and bar. I reconnected with my son's grade school teachers. The publisher of Lost Horse Press was a regular patron. I met musicians and drunks, fishing boat captains and crews. Pool sharks and millionaires who played dice for thousands of dollars spread on the weathered wood of the hundred-year-old bar.
And one night, I sat out again with Guinness Jeff, who I had learned was from Alaska, who had been a carny, a salmon fisherman, a prankster, a roofer and in all kind of trouble. I learned he was a little shy of me, but that after a Jack and Coke (yes, he switched his drink on me), he would loudly declare my praises. And that night, I deliberately left my coat in the server station, sat on the bench with him, lit up my cigarette, hugged myself and shivered. "It's cold tonight," I said. He smiled and hugged me to him.
That was how it began.
I got my wish. I got out of Idaho.
Now I just want to go back.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
This post doesn't count
It's just links:
Snopes investigates the email I forwarded to them out of frustration: Health Care Reform Requires Microchipping?
(Remember that friend I broke with? It was over this. Remember how I told you the writers' logic was bad and that the sources addressed weren't saying what they were saying they said? Snopes discovered even more: they were quoting an irrelevant, dead bill and saying it was the one that passed. I love Snopes.)
Compassion Reading, from Willow Springs's Bark
Eliminating the absolutes in your writing.
Get Up, Come on, Get Down with the [sic]ness
Correcting the grammar of Jesus Freak texts sent to you at ungodly morning hours by well-meaning but sanctimoniously defensive people. Fantastic for linguistics students to read.
More later.
P.S. And not a link, but only Pyrite will get this one: My land mass erupts with kittens.
Damn you, Pyrite, for stealing away all my studying time with Dominick Deegan!
Snopes investigates the email I forwarded to them out of frustration: Health Care Reform Requires Microchipping?
(Remember that friend I broke with? It was over this. Remember how I told you the writers' logic was bad and that the sources addressed weren't saying what they were saying they said? Snopes discovered even more: they were quoting an irrelevant, dead bill and saying it was the one that passed. I love Snopes.)
Compassion Reading, from Willow Springs's Bark
Eliminating the absolutes in your writing.
Get Up, Come on, Get Down with the [sic]ness
Correcting the grammar of Jesus Freak texts sent to you at ungodly morning hours by well-meaning but sanctimoniously defensive people. Fantastic for linguistics students to read.
More later.
P.S. And not a link, but only Pyrite will get this one: My land mass erupts with kittens.
Damn you, Pyrite, for stealing away all my studying time with Dominick Deegan!
Chigau, yo
I brought up the "concerning" linguistic issue in class (and derailed the discussion that was happening--people were panicking about the test, and since I rarely panic about tests, it never occurred to me I was causing harm until people got frantic. I still feel bad about that). I realized something important.
People have a violent reaction to the word "error." I know, I can be naive. I tried to explain my thought processes on how the word usage of "concerning" changed. I tried to use words that weren't loaded, but I failed.
Error equals wrong, for a lot of people. For me, it has a subtler meaning, maybe because I've studied science. An error can produce marvelous things, especially in genetic code. Twelve generations ago some cells in one of my ancestors had an error--known in science as a mutation--after a certain number of divisions in the zygote and forgot how to make a certain protein. It's an error, but it produced what we call our genetic heirloom in my family: the white marks that appear in the forelock, insides of elbows, backs of knees and a small patch on the abdomen. (I only got three of these, a little tummy mark, a tiny spot on the back of my left knee and the white patch you see in my hair.)
Now this is definitely an error, because in the standard operating manual of a human cell, the ability to make or turn on or off a specific protein is standard. Deviation is an error. And yet this is not something that turned out to be wrong. It turned out to be something beautiful (and useless, and bothersome in the sun) and valued.
I wish we had a word for this like they have in Japanese. The word "chigau" is often used for "that's wrong." But what it also means is, "that's different." (Let's not get into the disturbing idea that "different" thus equals "wrong" in Japanese society. Let's give them the benefit of the doubt, okay?) When you put forth an idea, asking if the party is happening on Friday at 6, your friend replies, "Chigau, yo. Haku-ji desu." He's saying, "No, it's different. It's at 8."
Lots of language changes from errors. In linguistics class, we learned that many African American speakers are closer to historically spoken correct English than the rest of us, because the way they say "ask," "aks" (sounds like "axe"), is how the word was said and spelled, until someone or several someones made an error and spelled it the way we spell it now. Our standard speech as we know it now is based on an error.
And you'll tell me, then, stop saying it's an error. Say it's a change. It is a change. But it was also an error that made the change. And there is nothing bad about that. At all. The judgment is not coming from me. I use the word "error," but I hope by now you can see what I mean by it. The judgment is in the reaction to the word "error." People hate to be told they're bad, even when they aren't being told they're bad. There's no judgment in my use of the word "error." I explained in my blog entry last time that the change creates a valid use of the word; it just sounds wrong to my ears. My opinion about something is not the final word on something, but I am entitled to it. "Concerning" in that usage still doesn't sound right to me, and I would never use it that way, but I recognize others' use of the language to be correct.
I am just fascinated with the origin of the change, and what that means for language change in general. I am beginning to understand that virtually all language change begins as an error and becomes standard usage over time.
Part of me would like to write my theoretical paper on the "concerning" change. It would help me to understand it, and maybe help me to explain it without hurting people's feelings.
People have a violent reaction to the word "error." I know, I can be naive. I tried to explain my thought processes on how the word usage of "concerning" changed. I tried to use words that weren't loaded, but I failed.
Error equals wrong, for a lot of people. For me, it has a subtler meaning, maybe because I've studied science. An error can produce marvelous things, especially in genetic code. Twelve generations ago some cells in one of my ancestors had an error--known in science as a mutation--after a certain number of divisions in the zygote and forgot how to make a certain protein. It's an error, but it produced what we call our genetic heirloom in my family: the white marks that appear in the forelock, insides of elbows, backs of knees and a small patch on the abdomen. (I only got three of these, a little tummy mark, a tiny spot on the back of my left knee and the white patch you see in my hair.)
Now this is definitely an error, because in the standard operating manual of a human cell, the ability to make or turn on or off a specific protein is standard. Deviation is an error. And yet this is not something that turned out to be wrong. It turned out to be something beautiful (and useless, and bothersome in the sun) and valued.
I wish we had a word for this like they have in Japanese. The word "chigau" is often used for "that's wrong." But what it also means is, "that's different." (Let's not get into the disturbing idea that "different" thus equals "wrong" in Japanese society. Let's give them the benefit of the doubt, okay?) When you put forth an idea, asking if the party is happening on Friday at 6, your friend replies, "Chigau, yo. Haku-ji desu." He's saying, "No, it's different. It's at 8."
Lots of language changes from errors. In linguistics class, we learned that many African American speakers are closer to historically spoken correct English than the rest of us, because the way they say "ask," "aks" (sounds like "axe"), is how the word was said and spelled, until someone or several someones made an error and spelled it the way we spell it now. Our standard speech as we know it now is based on an error.
And you'll tell me, then, stop saying it's an error. Say it's a change. It is a change. But it was also an error that made the change. And there is nothing bad about that. At all. The judgment is not coming from me. I use the word "error," but I hope by now you can see what I mean by it. The judgment is in the reaction to the word "error." People hate to be told they're bad, even when they aren't being told they're bad. There's no judgment in my use of the word "error." I explained in my blog entry last time that the change creates a valid use of the word; it just sounds wrong to my ears. My opinion about something is not the final word on something, but I am entitled to it. "Concerning" in that usage still doesn't sound right to me, and I would never use it that way, but I recognize others' use of the language to be correct.
I am just fascinated with the origin of the change, and what that means for language change in general. I am beginning to understand that virtually all language change begins as an error and becomes standard usage over time.
Part of me would like to write my theoretical paper on the "concerning" change. It would help me to understand it, and maybe help me to explain it without hurting people's feelings.
Friday, April 9, 2010
Do we steal what we love?
A friend of mine posted this link on his Facebook: $20 DIY Book Scanner from Wired
Naturally, in the comments, a spirited discussion of copyright infringement ensued.
One of them lamented that he must have been silly to think he could make money writing. Someone else said, "Your failed business model is not my problem." I think it was a signature line but it fit perfectly with the situation.
I've been thinking about copyrights lately. I hate digital rights management software (known as DRM) because it's buggy and invasive. It never does anything to enhance the product, and in the case of games, often renders then unusable. We're often told that we should buy digital copies from legitimate sources, because the pirated versions have viruses attached and may have missing code, but generally, a pirated copy is a clean copy, DRM-free, and will work on your computer for years. Just try passing your "legitimate" copy from one machine to another and see what the DRM does to you. No computer upgrades for you!
DRM also uses data mining code to spy on you and report back to the host. When Sony started putting DRM on its music CDs that not only locked up the data but launched itself into the computer, dug in tight and ripped other things out when removed, I vowed never to buy another Sony CD or any other music format as long as I lived. I have kept and will keep that promise.
I know I'd like to be paid for my writing someday, but before that happens, I need, as one commenter wrote, to write something worth buying. Not simply worth reading, but worth buying. I've bought Anna Karenina at least four times. I've owned Strunk and White's Elements of Style about the same number of times. There are books I'll buy again and again because I've loaned them to friends and never gotten them back, lost them in moves from one house to another, or simply misplaced.
By contrast, I've bought plenty of books I wish I hadn't, and there are plenty of books I've borrowed and given right back. I took John Grisham's A Time to Kill off my mother's shelf because she told me it was his best. I read 15 pages of prose so dry and dead that I felt my brain desiccating and peeling back from the inside of my skull. I'll never read him again.
Likewise, I'll never read the Twilight books. The prose is an estrogen swamp with ethical quicksands and self-justification vines to hold you still until the Love Monster eats you. I've opened each of the Twilight books in the store, read a page or two and had to laugh just to keep from feeling pain. They reminded me of the time I visited some friends of mine. These friends, a guy and two girls all platonic and living together in a tiny room in a gaijin house in Tokyo, had a lovely idea. Every night before they'd all go to sleep, they would take turns reading a chapter from some novel. If I ever live with a group again, I am completely stealing this idea.
I had come over to spend the night, and my friends were in the middle of The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy. They were worshipful of the book. I, coming into it from the middle, and having no context, fell headlong into the swampy prose. I tried not to laugh out loud. I really did. But I failed, and I wasn't invited back to Bedtime Story Hour ever again.
So there are things we'll buy, things we'll sample and put down, things we'll avoid, and things we'll laugh at from a comfortable distance. What are the things we steal? Do we steal what we love?
Sometimes we do. I know I've "stolen" a whole catalogue of music from the 80s by paying a tiny fee to a Russian music site. They claim they are legal and the artists are paid, but I don't believe them. I don't care. I love 80s music and I'm not willing to pay 99 cents a song from iTunes (plus DRM, yay) when I've already paid a bunch of money for all that music when I was a kid. The artists aren't getting paid from Apple much more than they are paid from the Russian music pirates, really.
Would I steal a book I love? I've never felt the need. There are book torrents. I've never been interested in exploring them. As adorable as the Kindle is, and as much the geek in me wants one just to pet and coo over, I really prefer having a page-turnable book or magazine in my hands. I love the smell of books. I love the sound a hardback makes when you close it. (thump) I love the physical stacks of books and there is nothing more sinfully lovely than a fashion magazine's September issue. Our children, if they're still able to breathe and haven't burned up in the global warming, will hate me someday for all my inch-thick, glossy September Vogue and Elle copies.
My point, I suppose, is that the issue of copyright is a simple one. We really ought to pay for what we consume. But as a consumer, and a reader, I won't pay for what I don't love, or for what I've paid for once already. And I'm not willing to load down my computer with buggy malware that allows a company to market me more accurately and aggressively, just so an artist can get a few pennies. There's the simple "should" and the more complicated "is."
Or maybe it's not so complicated. Here's a business model I think will work: give me a clean copy of what I want, and I'll pay the artist the whole amount directly. Or I'll pay the artist the majority and a portion goes to the computer geek who programs the site, formats the artwork digitally and arranges the pay process. Is 70-30 fair enough?
Then a copyright will actually mean something.
Naturally, in the comments, a spirited discussion of copyright infringement ensued.
One of them lamented that he must have been silly to think he could make money writing. Someone else said, "Your failed business model is not my problem." I think it was a signature line but it fit perfectly with the situation.
I've been thinking about copyrights lately. I hate digital rights management software (known as DRM) because it's buggy and invasive. It never does anything to enhance the product, and in the case of games, often renders then unusable. We're often told that we should buy digital copies from legitimate sources, because the pirated versions have viruses attached and may have missing code, but generally, a pirated copy is a clean copy, DRM-free, and will work on your computer for years. Just try passing your "legitimate" copy from one machine to another and see what the DRM does to you. No computer upgrades for you!
DRM also uses data mining code to spy on you and report back to the host. When Sony started putting DRM on its music CDs that not only locked up the data but launched itself into the computer, dug in tight and ripped other things out when removed, I vowed never to buy another Sony CD or any other music format as long as I lived. I have kept and will keep that promise.
I know I'd like to be paid for my writing someday, but before that happens, I need, as one commenter wrote, to write something worth buying. Not simply worth reading, but worth buying. I've bought Anna Karenina at least four times. I've owned Strunk and White's Elements of Style about the same number of times. There are books I'll buy again and again because I've loaned them to friends and never gotten them back, lost them in moves from one house to another, or simply misplaced.
By contrast, I've bought plenty of books I wish I hadn't, and there are plenty of books I've borrowed and given right back. I took John Grisham's A Time to Kill off my mother's shelf because she told me it was his best. I read 15 pages of prose so dry and dead that I felt my brain desiccating and peeling back from the inside of my skull. I'll never read him again.
Likewise, I'll never read the Twilight books. The prose is an estrogen swamp with ethical quicksands and self-justification vines to hold you still until the Love Monster eats you. I've opened each of the Twilight books in the store, read a page or two and had to laugh just to keep from feeling pain. They reminded me of the time I visited some friends of mine. These friends, a guy and two girls all platonic and living together in a tiny room in a gaijin house in Tokyo, had a lovely idea. Every night before they'd all go to sleep, they would take turns reading a chapter from some novel. If I ever live with a group again, I am completely stealing this idea.
I had come over to spend the night, and my friends were in the middle of The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy. They were worshipful of the book. I, coming into it from the middle, and having no context, fell headlong into the swampy prose. I tried not to laugh out loud. I really did. But I failed, and I wasn't invited back to Bedtime Story Hour ever again.
So there are things we'll buy, things we'll sample and put down, things we'll avoid, and things we'll laugh at from a comfortable distance. What are the things we steal? Do we steal what we love?
Sometimes we do. I know I've "stolen" a whole catalogue of music from the 80s by paying a tiny fee to a Russian music site. They claim they are legal and the artists are paid, but I don't believe them. I don't care. I love 80s music and I'm not willing to pay 99 cents a song from iTunes (plus DRM, yay) when I've already paid a bunch of money for all that music when I was a kid. The artists aren't getting paid from Apple much more than they are paid from the Russian music pirates, really.
Would I steal a book I love? I've never felt the need. There are book torrents. I've never been interested in exploring them. As adorable as the Kindle is, and as much the geek in me wants one just to pet and coo over, I really prefer having a page-turnable book or magazine in my hands. I love the smell of books. I love the sound a hardback makes when you close it. (thump) I love the physical stacks of books and there is nothing more sinfully lovely than a fashion magazine's September issue. Our children, if they're still able to breathe and haven't burned up in the global warming, will hate me someday for all my inch-thick, glossy September Vogue and Elle copies.
My point, I suppose, is that the issue of copyright is a simple one. We really ought to pay for what we consume. But as a consumer, and a reader, I won't pay for what I don't love, or for what I've paid for once already. And I'm not willing to load down my computer with buggy malware that allows a company to market me more accurately and aggressively, just so an artist can get a few pennies. There's the simple "should" and the more complicated "is."
Or maybe it's not so complicated. Here's a business model I think will work: give me a clean copy of what I want, and I'll pay the artist the whole amount directly. Or I'll pay the artist the majority and a portion goes to the computer geek who programs the site, formats the artwork digitally and arranges the pay process. Is 70-30 fair enough?
Then a copyright will actually mean something.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Concerning "concerning"
Rereading Strunk and White, particularly the misused words and phrases, reminds me of something that's been bugging me lately: the recent use of the word "concerning" to mean "worrisome." I hear it a lot with teenagers. "That's very concerning...."
My son used it, and I, being a mother, corrected him. "That word doesn't have that usage. It means, 'about,' or 'related to.' It doesn't mean 'to be worried about.'"
But maybe I'm wrong. I'm taking linguistics this quarter, and I'm discovering things about the language I never knew before. For example, there's the bold linguistic statement, "No native speaker of a language can make a verbal mistake in that language. It is not possible." What that means is that however a person was brought up to speak is correct for that person, and no person should have her spoken grammar "corrected" after speaking. However she spoke the language is correct, because she is a native speaker.
Is your hair on fire yet? Wait, before you explode, understand that the rules for writing are different and more codified than for speech. All that means is that you'd better make your verbs and subjects agree (even though that's an arbitrary Latin rule imposed on the Germanic language in the 14th century) in your writing. Don't worry about it in speech.
So, what's to be done about "concerning"? The kids can't make mistakes in their native language. That usage of that word is correct and carries meaning for them. It separates them from me, yes, but that's what happens over time. Youth and age are separate, and ever will be separate. Time does that. But what do we do about this word? It's right for them. It's wrong for me. Is it their language now, and they form it, leaving me behind? Is that what language does? I know it's what time does. Does language, also?
Here's my problem. The paradox is that the children coined new usage for this word out of ignorance of the old. They saw the word "concerning," knew that "concern" had a particularly intimate connotation, and, not knowing the meaning of "concerning," applied what they knew about "concern" to it. Now this is coinage from an error. However, the children cannot make an error in their native language. Thus they have coined a new, valid usage of the word.
And yet, my mind rebels, and insists this is an error. Am I wrong? But I am a native speaker of English, and so I can't make mistakes in it, either. What do we do about this?
Here's what I foresee happening. It will take a decade or two, but it will happen.
Only some of these children will be "corrected" by teachers and professors. Eventually, some of them will become teachers themselves. They, using the word in this way, will not correct those who do. (This word is proliferate on the internet in this usage. It's really taken hold.) In time, there will be more users than nonusers and the word will have the power similar to the split infinitive. There will be holdouts stomping their feet and screaming, "It doesn't HAVE THAT USAGE!" but they, like most cranks, will be ignored. And then it will appear in the dictionary with that usage.
(The dictionary thing may happen sooner than that, as dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive. We think of them as rule delimiters, but what they really are is pattern describers.)
What do you think?
My son used it, and I, being a mother, corrected him. "That word doesn't have that usage. It means, 'about,' or 'related to.' It doesn't mean 'to be worried about.'"
But maybe I'm wrong. I'm taking linguistics this quarter, and I'm discovering things about the language I never knew before. For example, there's the bold linguistic statement, "No native speaker of a language can make a verbal mistake in that language. It is not possible." What that means is that however a person was brought up to speak is correct for that person, and no person should have her spoken grammar "corrected" after speaking. However she spoke the language is correct, because she is a native speaker.
Is your hair on fire yet? Wait, before you explode, understand that the rules for writing are different and more codified than for speech. All that means is that you'd better make your verbs and subjects agree (even though that's an arbitrary Latin rule imposed on the Germanic language in the 14th century) in your writing. Don't worry about it in speech.
So, what's to be done about "concerning"? The kids can't make mistakes in their native language. That usage of that word is correct and carries meaning for them. It separates them from me, yes, but that's what happens over time. Youth and age are separate, and ever will be separate. Time does that. But what do we do about this word? It's right for them. It's wrong for me. Is it their language now, and they form it, leaving me behind? Is that what language does? I know it's what time does. Does language, also?
Here's my problem. The paradox is that the children coined new usage for this word out of ignorance of the old. They saw the word "concerning," knew that "concern" had a particularly intimate connotation, and, not knowing the meaning of "concerning," applied what they knew about "concern" to it. Now this is coinage from an error. However, the children cannot make an error in their native language. Thus they have coined a new, valid usage of the word.
And yet, my mind rebels, and insists this is an error. Am I wrong? But I am a native speaker of English, and so I can't make mistakes in it, either. What do we do about this?
Here's what I foresee happening. It will take a decade or two, but it will happen.
Only some of these children will be "corrected" by teachers and professors. Eventually, some of them will become teachers themselves. They, using the word in this way, will not correct those who do. (This word is proliferate on the internet in this usage. It's really taken hold.) In time, there will be more users than nonusers and the word will have the power similar to the split infinitive. There will be holdouts stomping their feet and screaming, "It doesn't HAVE THAT USAGE!" but they, like most cranks, will be ignored. And then it will appear in the dictionary with that usage.
(The dictionary thing may happen sooner than that, as dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive. We think of them as rule delimiters, but what they really are is pattern describers.)
What do you think?
Saturday, April 3, 2010
When I have money, I never want to spend it
Sometimes I play the slots after work. I don't always win, but sometimes I do. Tonight, I won.
I started thinking about what I could spend it on, if I was going to spend any at all.
For some reason, I couldn't think of anything.
I could certainly pay bills with it. I could put it toward a new laptop, as mine is old and slowing way down. I could buy some new clothes, some nice ones. I could use a new purse--and I usually get one in the spring and in the fall. I could buy some groceries, or take my son and boyfriend out to a really nice dinner.
I just don't want to do any of that. I like having it, and looking at it and thinking about what I could have, but I don't really need anything. I have enough things.
This never happens when I don't have money. When I don't have money, I want everything. I want books, clothes, games, toys, notebooks, pens, food. If I see it, I want it.
But now I have money, and I don't want anything.
So I think I'll put it away and let it grow with some compounding interest, and when I need it, it will be there. If someone else needs it, it will be there.
I like that.
I started thinking about what I could spend it on, if I was going to spend any at all.
For some reason, I couldn't think of anything.
I could certainly pay bills with it. I could put it toward a new laptop, as mine is old and slowing way down. I could buy some new clothes, some nice ones. I could use a new purse--and I usually get one in the spring and in the fall. I could buy some groceries, or take my son and boyfriend out to a really nice dinner.
I just don't want to do any of that. I like having it, and looking at it and thinking about what I could have, but I don't really need anything. I have enough things.
This never happens when I don't have money. When I don't have money, I want everything. I want books, clothes, games, toys, notebooks, pens, food. If I see it, I want it.
But now I have money, and I don't want anything.
So I think I'll put it away and let it grow with some compounding interest, and when I need it, it will be there. If someone else needs it, it will be there.
I like that.
Friday, April 2, 2010
First shot over the bow
I completely lost my patience yesterday. One of my Facebook friends, who has been showing a disturbing singlemindedness over the Obama Administration, posted two links that claim the newly passed health care reform mandates every single American will be forced to have a microchip implanted 36 months from the signing of the bill.
If you really think you need to read these, here they are:
House and Senate Health Bills Require the Micro Chipping of Americans
Microchipping (Mark of the Beast) to Begin in 36 Months Under ObamaCare - Project Nsearch
If you read the things carefully, and you read the links provided within those pages, you realize something profound. These people do not understand logic. Particularly formal logic. They use a lot of "thus" and "therefore" but they have not a clue how to properly use them, because their syllogisms are broken. There is nothing in those documents about every American being required to wear these RFID chips. They just saw the words "registry" and "RFID" and started swinging the baseball bat at their favorite dead horse.
Since the friend was pleasant enough in high school and really is, for the most part, a caring individual as long as he's not spewing hate in Barack's direction and promises of a bloody revolution to the rest of us, I started typing up a comment. I intended to show him the broken logic, ask him to reread the statements with that in mind and consider taking another, non-hysterical point of view. About two sentences in, I scrapped it and broke the Facebook connection with the guy.
Cowardly? Maybe. I just realized there was no point. If he is unable to recognize the obviously broken logic, he likely doesn't have the same tools I have to approach a critical reading of the sites, and so it would be unfair of me to debate him on that level. It would sound condescending to instruct him on those skills, and I would be willing to bet he'd reject them, or worse, claim he has them already while I obviously don't, because I can't see the obvious truth. Yes, I've had similar arguments before.
This has been bothering me all day, and I'm one of those people who are really interesting when bothered. I'll walk around the grocery store, having arguments with myself out loud (okay, muttering to myself, but that is out loud) about why this happened, what I could have done differently and why the hell is milk so expensive these days? Someday I'm going to be one of those old ladies that talk to the air and find my imaginary conversations more interesting than those with living, breathing humans. (If I'm not mistaken, someday was about five years ago.)
I blurted something out in my mutterings that I didn't like to hear myself say. This former friend of mine has a lot in common with my sister, father and mother. He wasn't a great student--I believe he took the advanced math and physics, but I don't think his GPA was much anywhere else. My sister was a C and D student before she dropped out. My mom dropped out of high school two weeks before graduation. My dad took a year of tech school after college, but didn't finish.
None of these people have had a liberal arts education, or as far as I can tell, even exposure to a university environment. They're all intelligent people, but they're intelligent in different ways than I am. I tend to be book smart, but street stupid. My parents are both very intelligent people. I don't think they could have produced me if they weren't. But their intelligence has never been challenged or directed. My sister and my mom are both highly sensitive on the subject of intelligence. Both will claim they are "not smart like (me)" and start hand waving and walking away if they feel out of their depth, rather than staying, listening and asking questions for clarification.
I think that the people that gravitate to this sort of information are people who feel inferior intellectually, even though they're not. What they really are is lazy. My mom has an obsession with being right, but she never takes the time to research something or think carefully about what is said. She just goes with a feeling that says, "This is right but that is wrong." If you ask her why, she starts that handwaving again and says, "I just know. It's obvious." Or my favorite, "It's in the Bible!"
There are lots of things in the Bible. Lots of nice, contradictory things. Of all the logical fallacies, only false dichotomy angers me more than appeal to (Biblical) authority.
My dad told my son, "If you read Sarah Palin's book, you'd understand why she's going to save this country when she's President." Had he read the book? Not exactly. But Glenn Beck had a very fair and balanced analysis of it on his show. Yeah.
Dogma, whether religious or political, is the last resort of people who want to talk about big things, but don't want to actually think. They're desperate to be right, so they fall victim to shrill rhetoric and logical fallacy, often quite deliberately used to mislead. This is true of liberals and conservatives, lest you think I am lumping all conservatives into this category while sanctifying myself. It's no more useful to let Stephen Colbert think for you than Glenn Beck.
The problem is that, like with my friend, they don't see the problem. They think I'm trying to trick them, or that the Devil is using me to tempt them off the path, or that--and I love this--their untrained ability to reason is better or more valuable than mine. Until I took my Logic and Critical Thinking class, I was in the same predicament. Once introduced to formal logic, my brain said, "Thank you! The world makes so much more sense now." I don't draw diagrams every time I'm presented with an argument, but I do test all the premises and see how syllogism fits together. If it's broken, I know to mistrust the information.
But that's not necessary to thinking critically. My mom and sister don't have to take that class. What they do have to do is stop, listen and ask themselves, "What does this person have to gain by telling me this? What is he citing? Is that a reliable source? What does that source have to gain? Does that source really say what he says it does?" It's so much easier to just accept what is said and disseminate it untested.
I should have argued with my friend. I should have asked him every one of those questions. Instead, I sent the links to Snopes and asked them to do it for me.
Ah, irony.
If you really think you need to read these, here they are:
House and Senate Health Bills Require the Micro Chipping of Americans
Microchipping (Mark of the Beast) to Begin in 36 Months Under ObamaCare - Project Nsearch
If you read the things carefully, and you read the links provided within those pages, you realize something profound. These people do not understand logic. Particularly formal logic. They use a lot of "thus" and "therefore" but they have not a clue how to properly use them, because their syllogisms are broken. There is nothing in those documents about every American being required to wear these RFID chips. They just saw the words "registry" and "RFID" and started swinging the baseball bat at their favorite dead horse.
Since the friend was pleasant enough in high school and really is, for the most part, a caring individual as long as he's not spewing hate in Barack's direction and promises of a bloody revolution to the rest of us, I started typing up a comment. I intended to show him the broken logic, ask him to reread the statements with that in mind and consider taking another, non-hysterical point of view. About two sentences in, I scrapped it and broke the Facebook connection with the guy.
Cowardly? Maybe. I just realized there was no point. If he is unable to recognize the obviously broken logic, he likely doesn't have the same tools I have to approach a critical reading of the sites, and so it would be unfair of me to debate him on that level. It would sound condescending to instruct him on those skills, and I would be willing to bet he'd reject them, or worse, claim he has them already while I obviously don't, because I can't see the obvious truth. Yes, I've had similar arguments before.
This has been bothering me all day, and I'm one of those people who are really interesting when bothered. I'll walk around the grocery store, having arguments with myself out loud (okay, muttering to myself, but that is out loud) about why this happened, what I could have done differently and why the hell is milk so expensive these days? Someday I'm going to be one of those old ladies that talk to the air and find my imaginary conversations more interesting than those with living, breathing humans. (If I'm not mistaken, someday was about five years ago.)
I blurted something out in my mutterings that I didn't like to hear myself say. This former friend of mine has a lot in common with my sister, father and mother. He wasn't a great student--I believe he took the advanced math and physics, but I don't think his GPA was much anywhere else. My sister was a C and D student before she dropped out. My mom dropped out of high school two weeks before graduation. My dad took a year of tech school after college, but didn't finish.
None of these people have had a liberal arts education, or as far as I can tell, even exposure to a university environment. They're all intelligent people, but they're intelligent in different ways than I am. I tend to be book smart, but street stupid. My parents are both very intelligent people. I don't think they could have produced me if they weren't. But their intelligence has never been challenged or directed. My sister and my mom are both highly sensitive on the subject of intelligence. Both will claim they are "not smart like (me)" and start hand waving and walking away if they feel out of their depth, rather than staying, listening and asking questions for clarification.
I think that the people that gravitate to this sort of information are people who feel inferior intellectually, even though they're not. What they really are is lazy. My mom has an obsession with being right, but she never takes the time to research something or think carefully about what is said. She just goes with a feeling that says, "This is right but that is wrong." If you ask her why, she starts that handwaving again and says, "I just know. It's obvious." Or my favorite, "It's in the Bible!"
There are lots of things in the Bible. Lots of nice, contradictory things. Of all the logical fallacies, only false dichotomy angers me more than appeal to (Biblical) authority.
My dad told my son, "If you read Sarah Palin's book, you'd understand why she's going to save this country when she's President." Had he read the book? Not exactly. But Glenn Beck had a very fair and balanced analysis of it on his show. Yeah.
Dogma, whether religious or political, is the last resort of people who want to talk about big things, but don't want to actually think. They're desperate to be right, so they fall victim to shrill rhetoric and logical fallacy, often quite deliberately used to mislead. This is true of liberals and conservatives, lest you think I am lumping all conservatives into this category while sanctifying myself. It's no more useful to let Stephen Colbert think for you than Glenn Beck.
The problem is that, like with my friend, they don't see the problem. They think I'm trying to trick them, or that the Devil is using me to tempt them off the path, or that--and I love this--their untrained ability to reason is better or more valuable than mine. Until I took my Logic and Critical Thinking class, I was in the same predicament. Once introduced to formal logic, my brain said, "Thank you! The world makes so much more sense now." I don't draw diagrams every time I'm presented with an argument, but I do test all the premises and see how syllogism fits together. If it's broken, I know to mistrust the information.
But that's not necessary to thinking critically. My mom and sister don't have to take that class. What they do have to do is stop, listen and ask themselves, "What does this person have to gain by telling me this? What is he citing? Is that a reliable source? What does that source have to gain? Does that source really say what he says it does?" It's so much easier to just accept what is said and disseminate it untested.
I should have argued with my friend. I should have asked him every one of those questions. Instead, I sent the links to Snopes and asked them to do it for me.
Ah, irony.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)