More than a month, actually. What have I been doing?
Well, as far as writing goes, I did write an article for every letter of the alphabet. Some topical, most autobiographical, more as an exercise than anything else. I don't think, right now, I'd like to post all of them here, but I'll post a few; they should appear below shortly after this post.
I spent time at home, spent time at Leslie's home, spent New Year's Eve with friends, and then came back and enjoyed a little quiet. Finally, school started again. This semester I'm taking the following:
1. Chaucer. He's a big, important figure in English, I'd say. Even in the century after he wrote (he died in 1400) he was proclaimed to be the best English writer ever. So the class is setting out to read all of Chaucer's major works in chronological order, a biography on him, and lots of secondary sourcework. There are 5 students in the class, including one that joined us for the first time today. It's a cozy group. The professor knows what he's talking about, and isn't averse to occasionally going off on tangential subjects. The discussion is refreshing, though like any class we're not always right, and don't always have an immediate answer to the professor's questions.
2. Simulation/simulacra. Simulacra are what Plato calls evil copies. Copies are already derivative and degraded from an original ideal. Simulacra are entities that no longer resemble the original idea, that are too far removed from the original to be identified with something. He used it to speak against things like, for instance, drama, which is far removed from the real. So far we've only read one thinker in the class (Deleuze), but his big schtick is overturning Plato's order, that what distinguishes copies is not their similarity to an ideal, but their difference from it. One resulting claim is that simulation can produce its own sense and be as real as anything else. We go on talking along those lines throughout the course, studying technology, the military, game theory, and other things; what I look forward to most is when we talk about artifical intelligence. The people are good, but here I feel most underwater.
3. Histories of Sexuality. It doesn't get more specific than the title. We're going from African diaspora fiction to medieval fiction, studying representations of history and sexuality in different works. Sexuality here doesn't just imply sexual acts, but understandings of sex, gender, and sexual orientation. With certain people, I tend to trail off by the time I mention this one. There are more people in this class, and the professor sometimes likes taking long asides, but he has a challenging intensity that makes us talk more. It's good.
So, overall, I'm pleased. I have one more class that starts in February with a famous novelist whose books I haven't read. Since I'd rather remain anonymous, let's just say his name is Sir Fish Speeddeath.
Jan 28, 2009
Jan 14, 2009
C is for Commodore
I can't remember the exact year. It was Christmas of 1988 maybe; I think I was three. Maybe four. To my appearance now, it has been a fixture in my life for nearly as long as I can remember. Maybe even my association with Christmas comes with a lost memory of a box opening, because boxes normally open then. Let's say, then, I was young.
What matters anyway is not how it came, but that it was there. The Commodore 128 personal computer. You can see screenshots of the start-up screen online, I'm sure: the 128 screen was monochromatic green, while the 64 screen was rendered in pleasing blues. The command prompt was ready, and the information at the top detailed the capacities of the system. A clue: the number of the system detailed how much RAM it had. In kilobytes. It was a scant, scant measure indeed.
So, there was a computer. That's nothing remarkable, maybe, except that my technological infusion began young and has continued until today, when I spend a decent portion of every day on one. Yes, it was a gateway. But what would it have been a gateway to for a four year old?
Games. Electronic games. I'd seen the tabletop versions of Pacman and Donkey Kong at Pizza Hut, but they were always busy with enthusiastic people and I could never get to play. I saw the whirring lights, the figures running up and down to the beck of a controller while all around the music was accentuated by beeping sounds.
And did we get games! Some were from Q-Link (a service I knew nothing about), some from the bargain bin at the store, some came through a subscription service called "Loadstar," and many were from Dad's friend Dave, who was bearded, bespectacled, and friendly. In the early days, I didn't get to play very much, because I didn't know how to load the games, and my loading them depended on the graciousness of my older sisters, about 7 and 9 years old. Finally one of them wisened up and one day taught me how to type in the command. I still remember it now. LOAD"*",8,1. "*" would bring up the default mounted image on the floppy disk (which, back then, was actually floppy). Many times you could type in a particular name to load a particular game on the disk. Even after I learned how to do this, I never played more than an hour a day, since there was preschool, playing outside, and so many other things to do. Plus, other people wanted to play. Nonetheless, multiply the time I spent per day on it over seven or so years, and it's clear I spent a lot of time playing.
There was a huge assortment of games, playable on the joystick or the keyboard (there was a mouse, but no interface to use the mouse with). There were arcade ports as varied as Donkey Kong, Space Harrier, Gyruss, Pole Position, Burger Time, Bubble Bobble, Paperboy - platformers, shooters, racing games, and anything in between. Then there were the text games like Zork, The Wishbringer, and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. When I learned how to read, these Infocom adventures provided a sort of futile amusement; they were difficult for adults, and for me provided some early advanced reading and wandering. Even when I was older, I still died frequently and quickly in them. There were games that (to my appearance) were originally intended for computers, like Winter Games, Boulder Dash, Monopoly, and Impossible Mission, all of which provided instant amusement. Winter Games especially was funny; when I got the person ski-jumping to land on their head, there was this weird sound that I have always since associated with either cursing or brain injury. There were the games that frightened the crap out of me, like Beyond the Forbidden Forest where the character would be walking along a dead forest and suddenly... it was different every time! A monster would come from the ground and eat you, some flying creatures would eat you... and all I had was a bow I couldn't use right. Those games were very short.
I played my first RPG (role-playing game), Phantasie III: The Wrath of Nikademus, that way. The character stats were randomly generated, though I think one could pick the class and race. In battle, the status of characters' bodies was shown, including whether they had lost any limbs. When I didn't die quickly, my party would have its share of one-armed fighters and one-legged magicians. It was advanced for its time, but not the greatest; I've played and loved many RPGs since, but that trend probably didn't start here.
Then there was the edutainment, either a Fisher-Price game where I had to drive a bus around and pick up different people before time ran out or a Sesame Street game. I forget whether there was anything actually educational in either of them; rather, they held themselves more faithfully to their status as a game for kids.
And finally there were the programs that came along with it. I used a primitive text editor for making and printing my own newspaper layouts (with outrageous stories), I used a hurricane mapper to graph out the most outrageous and fantastic hurricane trajectories and strengths (one being blasted out of Mexico by a thermonuclear device). I played a trivia game and, through trial and error, learned a lot about environmentalism. There was a very primitive paint program where I would make a few futile scribbles and then wonder how people managed to render them.
There were so many games going on that I've only scratched the surface; there were hundreds. We weren't rich, but the games were inexpensive (because they were old) and, as I mentioned, my parents had friends. I'd play alone, I'd play with my sisters, I'd play with friends, and I'd watch other people play. Sometimes my sisters and I, playing pretend, would make a menu up and type it out on the screen. When I was scared to be alone in the den, the big exception was when the Commodore was on, the lights were bright, and I could hear something from the speakers. My first paper for school, on the wombat, was typed up in the word processor. It was a big deal typing it up at that point, without any of the standardization that would come in only a couple of years with the spreading popularity of advanced word processors into schools. (And yes, font choice was advanced compared to what mine was.) It wasn't the center of my life, but it was important.
The end of the Commodore era came rather suddenly. By the fifth grade, 1996, I had a Sega Genesis and played it a lot. I could make a list of the games from that era I'm still nostalgic about. I probably played it more than I did the Commodore, but the Commdore had over ten times the games and had some classics besides; I couldn't help going back frequently to pay homage. That's imposing a half-truth; I knew the Commodore was old, perhaps, and knew we hadn't gotten any new games for it recently, but there was no sense in me of it having been passed by or made obsolete, part of an irrevocable past. I didn't pay homage, but rather played and enjoyed as I always did these familiar companions that I would play cyclically.
Then one day that changed. I got home one December afternoon. Dad was home early, and of course Katie and Diana were home. I saw cow-print boxes with the words "Gateway" on them. In place of the Commodore was a new computer, with a larger monitor. The computer was larger too and stood up, rather than sitting flat under the monitor. There was a sleek, round mouse, a keyboard, but no joystick (we would soon get one). Dad was showing my sisters how to use the new computer. It had Myst, which Diana was tentatively playing (it's like at school, she said), and Monopoly like the old one my sisters and I played but with shinier graphics. Soon we would get the Internet and AOL. An era was beginning.
In contrast, the old computer, dear old Commodore, was put in its original box, shuffled off to the storage room between the den and the garage, to sit in darkness. The games were gone. They could no longer be played. A couple of instruction manuals kicked around for a while, reminders of the games, so recently friends, that had been lost. I would play those games again. One time, briefly, we hooked up the Commodore again for nostalgia's sake. For a few weeks I played the games. Then the disk drive closing mechanism broke. Now the games are available via emulation, but finding the games, getting the emulators to work, and mapping out the joystick to the keys isn't the same experience. An era was ending.
The change was necessary; the games I would play, the websites I would visit, the chat rooms I would chat in during the next few years became important too, and I can say that I wish there were more letters in the alphabet so I could talk about them all. But that doesn't make the past less important, even remembered through the skewing influence of nostalgia.
My Commodore introduced me to computers, to command prompts, to video games.
And I miss it.
What matters anyway is not how it came, but that it was there. The Commodore 128 personal computer. You can see screenshots of the start-up screen online, I'm sure: the 128 screen was monochromatic green, while the 64 screen was rendered in pleasing blues. The command prompt was ready, and the information at the top detailed the capacities of the system. A clue: the number of the system detailed how much RAM it had. In kilobytes. It was a scant, scant measure indeed.
So, there was a computer. That's nothing remarkable, maybe, except that my technological infusion began young and has continued until today, when I spend a decent portion of every day on one. Yes, it was a gateway. But what would it have been a gateway to for a four year old?
Games. Electronic games. I'd seen the tabletop versions of Pacman and Donkey Kong at Pizza Hut, but they were always busy with enthusiastic people and I could never get to play. I saw the whirring lights, the figures running up and down to the beck of a controller while all around the music was accentuated by beeping sounds.
And did we get games! Some were from Q-Link (a service I knew nothing about), some from the bargain bin at the store, some came through a subscription service called "Loadstar," and many were from Dad's friend Dave, who was bearded, bespectacled, and friendly. In the early days, I didn't get to play very much, because I didn't know how to load the games, and my loading them depended on the graciousness of my older sisters, about 7 and 9 years old. Finally one of them wisened up and one day taught me how to type in the command. I still remember it now. LOAD"*",8,1. "*" would bring up the default mounted image on the floppy disk (which, back then, was actually floppy). Many times you could type in a particular name to load a particular game on the disk. Even after I learned how to do this, I never played more than an hour a day, since there was preschool, playing outside, and so many other things to do. Plus, other people wanted to play. Nonetheless, multiply the time I spent per day on it over seven or so years, and it's clear I spent a lot of time playing.
There was a huge assortment of games, playable on the joystick or the keyboard (there was a mouse, but no interface to use the mouse with). There were arcade ports as varied as Donkey Kong, Space Harrier, Gyruss, Pole Position, Burger Time, Bubble Bobble, Paperboy - platformers, shooters, racing games, and anything in between. Then there were the text games like Zork, The Wishbringer, and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. When I learned how to read, these Infocom adventures provided a sort of futile amusement; they were difficult for adults, and for me provided some early advanced reading and wandering. Even when I was older, I still died frequently and quickly in them. There were games that (to my appearance) were originally intended for computers, like Winter Games, Boulder Dash, Monopoly, and Impossible Mission, all of which provided instant amusement. Winter Games especially was funny; when I got the person ski-jumping to land on their head, there was this weird sound that I have always since associated with either cursing or brain injury. There were the games that frightened the crap out of me, like Beyond the Forbidden Forest where the character would be walking along a dead forest and suddenly... it was different every time! A monster would come from the ground and eat you, some flying creatures would eat you... and all I had was a bow I couldn't use right. Those games were very short.
I played my first RPG (role-playing game), Phantasie III: The Wrath of Nikademus, that way. The character stats were randomly generated, though I think one could pick the class and race. In battle, the status of characters' bodies was shown, including whether they had lost any limbs. When I didn't die quickly, my party would have its share of one-armed fighters and one-legged magicians. It was advanced for its time, but not the greatest; I've played and loved many RPGs since, but that trend probably didn't start here.
Then there was the edutainment, either a Fisher-Price game where I had to drive a bus around and pick up different people before time ran out or a Sesame Street game. I forget whether there was anything actually educational in either of them; rather, they held themselves more faithfully to their status as a game for kids.
And finally there were the programs that came along with it. I used a primitive text editor for making and printing my own newspaper layouts (with outrageous stories), I used a hurricane mapper to graph out the most outrageous and fantastic hurricane trajectories and strengths (one being blasted out of Mexico by a thermonuclear device). I played a trivia game and, through trial and error, learned a lot about environmentalism. There was a very primitive paint program where I would make a few futile scribbles and then wonder how people managed to render them.
There were so many games going on that I've only scratched the surface; there were hundreds. We weren't rich, but the games were inexpensive (because they were old) and, as I mentioned, my parents had friends. I'd play alone, I'd play with my sisters, I'd play with friends, and I'd watch other people play. Sometimes my sisters and I, playing pretend, would make a menu up and type it out on the screen. When I was scared to be alone in the den, the big exception was when the Commodore was on, the lights were bright, and I could hear something from the speakers. My first paper for school, on the wombat, was typed up in the word processor. It was a big deal typing it up at that point, without any of the standardization that would come in only a couple of years with the spreading popularity of advanced word processors into schools. (And yes, font choice was advanced compared to what mine was.) It wasn't the center of my life, but it was important.
The end of the Commodore era came rather suddenly. By the fifth grade, 1996, I had a Sega Genesis and played it a lot. I could make a list of the games from that era I'm still nostalgic about. I probably played it more than I did the Commodore, but the Commdore had over ten times the games and had some classics besides; I couldn't help going back frequently to pay homage. That's imposing a half-truth; I knew the Commodore was old, perhaps, and knew we hadn't gotten any new games for it recently, but there was no sense in me of it having been passed by or made obsolete, part of an irrevocable past. I didn't pay homage, but rather played and enjoyed as I always did these familiar companions that I would play cyclically.
Then one day that changed. I got home one December afternoon. Dad was home early, and of course Katie and Diana were home. I saw cow-print boxes with the words "Gateway" on them. In place of the Commodore was a new computer, with a larger monitor. The computer was larger too and stood up, rather than sitting flat under the monitor. There was a sleek, round mouse, a keyboard, but no joystick (we would soon get one). Dad was showing my sisters how to use the new computer. It had Myst, which Diana was tentatively playing (it's like at school, she said), and Monopoly like the old one my sisters and I played but with shinier graphics. Soon we would get the Internet and AOL. An era was beginning.
In contrast, the old computer, dear old Commodore, was put in its original box, shuffled off to the storage room between the den and the garage, to sit in darkness. The games were gone. They could no longer be played. A couple of instruction manuals kicked around for a while, reminders of the games, so recently friends, that had been lost. I would play those games again. One time, briefly, we hooked up the Commodore again for nostalgia's sake. For a few weeks I played the games. Then the disk drive closing mechanism broke. Now the games are available via emulation, but finding the games, getting the emulators to work, and mapping out the joystick to the keys isn't the same experience. An era was ending.
The change was necessary; the games I would play, the websites I would visit, the chat rooms I would chat in during the next few years became important too, and I can say that I wish there were more letters in the alphabet so I could talk about them all. But that doesn't make the past less important, even remembered through the skewing influence of nostalgia.
My Commodore introduced me to computers, to command prompts, to video games.
And I miss it.
Jan 12, 2009
Y is for You're Trying Too Hard
... but I still like the Xenosaga series anyway for cramming itself as full of allusions (especially religious ones) as it can.
First, religious and philosophical allusions in Japanese RPGs and anime is nothing new. Neon Genesis Evangelion took it to a ridiculous level, starting with its title.
Here's a small, non-inclusive catalogue.
The titles of the three games: Der Wille zur Macht, Jenseits von Gut und Böse, and Also sprach Zarathustra. All of the titles from books by Nietzsche.
Earth: Lost Jerusalem (it's lost)
Orthodox Christianity resemblance in dress/setting: Ormus (including a Patriarch!)
Characters: Albedo, Rubedo, and Nigredo. All three are Jungian terms for human individuation.
Characters: (color) Testament.
Character: The android KOS-MOS. Kosmos. Universe, order, and harmony.
Character: chaos. Besides the obvious, is also called Yeshua.
Character: Abel. Yeah, that one.
Character: Nephilim. One of the more appropriate namings - she is rather ethereal.
Character: Ziggurat 8, nicknamed Ziggy. Nice way to tie in Mesopotamian architecture.
Character: Canaan, a Realian government agent.
E.S. Units: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, Benjamin and Dinah. Joseph's sons.
Ships: Woglinde, Dammerung. From Wagner operas.
Key Item: The Zohar, a monolithic artifact from Earth. Also has inscribed on it "bereshith." Hint: the start of the book of Genesis.
Key Item: Proto Omega... "Omega" being a symbol because that's really cool. Other things with Omega include Ω Universitas, Ω ID, Ω Res Novae, Ω Metempsychosis,
and Ω Metempsychosis.
Key Item: Vessels of Anima.
Group: Salvator faction - after the saint?
Place: Proto Merkabah, a giant ship they have to destroy.
Place: Labyrinthos.
Species: Gnosis. Sort of like spirits, I guess.
Gnosis: Abel's Ark - basically a really really huge intergalactic interdimensional creature.
Computer: Zarathustra. It's also a major boss in one of the games.
And that's only the start. The games are really great, especially the third one, but the only game that I've seen have even more ridiculous allusions is Xenogears: the game that would later come to spawn this trilogy.
First, religious and philosophical allusions in Japanese RPGs and anime is nothing new. Neon Genesis Evangelion took it to a ridiculous level, starting with its title.
Here's a small, non-inclusive catalogue.
The titles of the three games: Der Wille zur Macht, Jenseits von Gut und Böse, and Also sprach Zarathustra. All of the titles from books by Nietzsche.
Earth: Lost Jerusalem (it's lost)
Orthodox Christianity resemblance in dress/setting: Ormus (including a Patriarch!)
Characters: Albedo, Rubedo, and Nigredo. All three are Jungian terms for human individuation.
Characters: (color) Testament.
Character: The android KOS-MOS. Kosmos. Universe, order, and harmony.
Character: chaos. Besides the obvious, is also called Yeshua.
Character: Abel. Yeah, that one.
Character: Nephilim. One of the more appropriate namings - she is rather ethereal.
Character: Ziggurat 8, nicknamed Ziggy. Nice way to tie in Mesopotamian architecture.
Character: Canaan, a Realian government agent.
E.S. Units: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, Benjamin and Dinah. Joseph's sons.
Ships: Woglinde, Dammerung. From Wagner operas.
Key Item: The Zohar, a monolithic artifact from Earth. Also has inscribed on it "bereshith." Hint: the start of the book of Genesis.
Key Item: Proto Omega... "Omega" being a symbol because that's really cool. Other things with Omega include Ω Universitas, Ω ID, Ω Res Novae, Ω Metempsychosis,
and Ω Metempsychosis.
Key Item: Vessels of Anima.
Group: Salvator faction - after the saint?
Place: Proto Merkabah, a giant ship they have to destroy.
Place: Labyrinthos.
Species: Gnosis. Sort of like spirits, I guess.
Gnosis: Abel's Ark - basically a really really huge intergalactic interdimensional creature.
Computer: Zarathustra. It's also a major boss in one of the games.
And that's only the start. The games are really great, especially the third one, but the only game that I've seen have even more ridiculous allusions is Xenogears: the game that would later come to spawn this trilogy.
Jan 11, 2009
X is for X-Men
I know a lot about the X-Men.
I've read a few comics. They weren't that easy to get a hold of, and once I had money, I wasn't that interested. There was too much going on in those storylines, and my comic attention was pretty much burnt out between my old Sonic comics and the manga I started buying.
However, I entered into X-Men every other way I could. When I got my Sega Genesis for Christmas one year, X-Men was one of the games that came with it. There was Gambit, who used a really cool staff and shot flaming cards at the enemy. I knew that he was Cajun, which was cool. ("Cajun" to me meant he talked funny, but not quite Southern-funny.) Then there was Wolverine, who was short and couldn't jump well but made up for it with adamantine claws. Then there was Nightcrawler, some random tail-panther blue guy who could teleport in a pink blur, though the teleportation was really difficult to control and used up tons of power. Finally, there was Cyclops. He was my favorite, because he could jump high, was blue, and shot lasers out of his eyes. They also had support characters (Rogue, Storm, etc.) as power ups, which would come in and attack Juggernaut and those difficult boss characters; they were really useful. I could never beat the game without cheating, but I loved it nonetheless.
Then there was the cartoon TV series that showed on Saturday mornings and sometimes on weekday afternoons. I didn't get to always see it, but I could follow the storylines pretty well. There were sometimes crossovers with Spiderman, which I liked just as much.
When I went to a flea market in 1994 or 1995, I saw a card dealer. He had a bunch of X-Men collectible cards. I bought them and got to know the histories of Magneto, Professor X, and others.
And then, in fourth grade, I ran across some young adult X-Men novels and devoured them. They were pretty decent at the time, even though in the cover artwork Cyclops's flaccid rear end made it look like he had diarrhea.
From this early spattering of influences, they grew on me. I thought I knew all about them. They were a hero ensemble, not singular like Superman, Batman, or Spiderman (and I liked them all). There's just something about mutants with superpowers that is... cool. Their powers were awe-inspiring, ranging between telepathy, telekinesis, teleportation, pyrotechnics, super strength, controlling the weather, being able to absorb other people's powers, and shooting laser beams (out the eyes!). They're outcasts, sometimes socially dysfunctional, but they band together anyway, using a combination of science and their powers to help save the day from evil mutants. And even the evil mutants were sometimes not evil by choice, like Magneto, a survivor of the Jewish holocaust, had seen too many horrors to not be affected by them. It was deep and shiny at the same time. It might be one reason why I now like epic poetry so much.
In the ensuing years, I would see the movies (though not always when they first came out). I would be disappointed when they made Cyclops out to be more prickish rather than the confident leader that he was in my mind. I would read the Wikipedia articles on the X-Men in detail. Jean Grey would confirm herself as my favorite character, but so would Professor X and Magneto. I don't feign to know so much about it anymore, but I love it anyhow.
I've read a few comics. They weren't that easy to get a hold of, and once I had money, I wasn't that interested. There was too much going on in those storylines, and my comic attention was pretty much burnt out between my old Sonic comics and the manga I started buying.
However, I entered into X-Men every other way I could. When I got my Sega Genesis for Christmas one year, X-Men was one of the games that came with it. There was Gambit, who used a really cool staff and shot flaming cards at the enemy. I knew that he was Cajun, which was cool. ("Cajun" to me meant he talked funny, but not quite Southern-funny.) Then there was Wolverine, who was short and couldn't jump well but made up for it with adamantine claws. Then there was Nightcrawler, some random tail-panther blue guy who could teleport in a pink blur, though the teleportation was really difficult to control and used up tons of power. Finally, there was Cyclops. He was my favorite, because he could jump high, was blue, and shot lasers out of his eyes. They also had support characters (Rogue, Storm, etc.) as power ups, which would come in and attack Juggernaut and those difficult boss characters; they were really useful. I could never beat the game without cheating, but I loved it nonetheless.
Then there was the cartoon TV series that showed on Saturday mornings and sometimes on weekday afternoons. I didn't get to always see it, but I could follow the storylines pretty well. There were sometimes crossovers with Spiderman, which I liked just as much.
When I went to a flea market in 1994 or 1995, I saw a card dealer. He had a bunch of X-Men collectible cards. I bought them and got to know the histories of Magneto, Professor X, and others.
And then, in fourth grade, I ran across some young adult X-Men novels and devoured them. They were pretty decent at the time, even though in the cover artwork Cyclops's flaccid rear end made it look like he had diarrhea.
From this early spattering of influences, they grew on me. I thought I knew all about them. They were a hero ensemble, not singular like Superman, Batman, or Spiderman (and I liked them all). There's just something about mutants with superpowers that is... cool. Their powers were awe-inspiring, ranging between telepathy, telekinesis, teleportation, pyrotechnics, super strength, controlling the weather, being able to absorb other people's powers, and shooting laser beams (out the eyes!). They're outcasts, sometimes socially dysfunctional, but they band together anyway, using a combination of science and their powers to help save the day from evil mutants. And even the evil mutants were sometimes not evil by choice, like Magneto, a survivor of the Jewish holocaust, had seen too many horrors to not be affected by them. It was deep and shiny at the same time. It might be one reason why I now like epic poetry so much.
In the ensuing years, I would see the movies (though not always when they first came out). I would be disappointed when they made Cyclops out to be more prickish rather than the confident leader that he was in my mind. I would read the Wikipedia articles on the X-Men in detail. Jean Grey would confirm herself as my favorite character, but so would Professor X and Magneto. I don't feign to know so much about it anymore, but I love it anyhow.
W is for Winter
For a long time, during my childhood, I would look forward to winter. It wasn't my favorite season, as I tended to favor whatever season it happened to be. I lived, as I did for nearly all of my life, in Tennessee. The woods around my Mamaw and Papaw's house were largely made up of deciduous trees, bushes, poison ivy, and bugs. In the summer, they were thick with brush, thickets of thorn, ticks, and poison ivy. Quickly I learned how little I liked being scratched, bitten, and itchy.
In the winter, all that was gone. The malignant wildlife settled down into a cozy slumber. The animals I liked - rabbits, squirrels, and deer - were still around. Even though I would sometimes help my papaw hunt two out of three of them and liked the taste of them (especially deer), I considered them interesting and wouldn't have hurt any of them. I could see further in the woods without all of the greenery, each trunk a grey pillar to dance around, hide behind, and climb upon. The dead trees, laid down onto the ground, normally arched and twisted in interesting ways, so that they were challenging ballancing beams. The ground was littered with leaves that hadn't yet decomposed, still relatively crisp and fresh for kicking around. It was easier to find dead wood to use as sticks, which would quickly become swords to fight imaginary opponents off with. I used to pretend a lot, and the woods were the best place to do it. And on occasions when I got tired of my younger cousins, I knew enough to hide there indefinitely. It was my playground during winter as it couldn't be any other time of the year.
The biting cold was also refreshing. I could really feel the warmth of the sun on my cheeks when it was out, and it tickled pleasantly. It wasn't too cold normally, so that there was no problem with leaving my face free. For a while I wondered that my cheeks and ears didn't stay red permanently because I spent so much time outside. I could see my breath, moist puffs like a steam engine. I knew that it would be hot eventually; I liked hot weather too, but I was all the more determined to enjoy this novelty. And, it being Tennessee, there would be breaks, occasions where I could wear short sleeves and remember how it feels to not be cold at all outside.
I needn't mention snow, except to say that when good snows came, it was a special time filled with snowmen, snowball fights, and sledding interspersed with drying clothes and drinking hot chocolate.
And of course there are the holidays, especially Chrismas and New Year's Day. That meant time off from school, which meant more time to play. Peace and harmony for all entered into it too.
So, honeysuckle would come. The dazzling green of newly leafed trees would emerge and settle into more mature shades with time. The birds would return. Even now, winter isn't negative for me, because any death that comes with it implies a renewal. The child in me assents to that judgment.
In the winter, all that was gone. The malignant wildlife settled down into a cozy slumber. The animals I liked - rabbits, squirrels, and deer - were still around. Even though I would sometimes help my papaw hunt two out of three of them and liked the taste of them (especially deer), I considered them interesting and wouldn't have hurt any of them. I could see further in the woods without all of the greenery, each trunk a grey pillar to dance around, hide behind, and climb upon. The dead trees, laid down onto the ground, normally arched and twisted in interesting ways, so that they were challenging ballancing beams. The ground was littered with leaves that hadn't yet decomposed, still relatively crisp and fresh for kicking around. It was easier to find dead wood to use as sticks, which would quickly become swords to fight imaginary opponents off with. I used to pretend a lot, and the woods were the best place to do it. And on occasions when I got tired of my younger cousins, I knew enough to hide there indefinitely. It was my playground during winter as it couldn't be any other time of the year.
The biting cold was also refreshing. I could really feel the warmth of the sun on my cheeks when it was out, and it tickled pleasantly. It wasn't too cold normally, so that there was no problem with leaving my face free. For a while I wondered that my cheeks and ears didn't stay red permanently because I spent so much time outside. I could see my breath, moist puffs like a steam engine. I knew that it would be hot eventually; I liked hot weather too, but I was all the more determined to enjoy this novelty. And, it being Tennessee, there would be breaks, occasions where I could wear short sleeves and remember how it feels to not be cold at all outside.
I needn't mention snow, except to say that when good snows came, it was a special time filled with snowmen, snowball fights, and sledding interspersed with drying clothes and drinking hot chocolate.
And of course there are the holidays, especially Chrismas and New Year's Day. That meant time off from school, which meant more time to play. Peace and harmony for all entered into it too.
So, honeysuckle would come. The dazzling green of newly leafed trees would emerge and settle into more mature shades with time. The birds would return. Even now, winter isn't negative for me, because any death that comes with it implies a renewal. The child in me assents to that judgment.
Jan 9, 2009
Q is for Quizzes
I like games. That was letter G. Then, I dealt with the games that were intended to be games, complete with colorful boxes, fanciful concepts, and fraught with imaginary money/cards/pieces/timers/props.
I consider quizzes, tests, and their ilk to be games as well. They ... amuse me.
In elementary school, the tests were an easy demonstration of my abilities. I would race others trying to finish the multiplication facts first. In spelling tests, where races were impossible, it was about accuracy. Science and social studies were both easy, being only facts. I had a little difficulty with reading tests, because they didn't always ask about facts, but for interpretation. Even there, I liked them though because they were challenging, and we got to read stuff.
In state standardized testing, I found a new love. I learned how to guess. Of course, in first and second grade the questions were absurdly easy ("What does the Earth look like?" to a kid that inhaled astronomy books like candy). But there were some that I might not know. I felt special because I knew how to narrow down the choices, and I knew enough to do so meaningfully.
Even as middle and high school came on and the tests became more written and less multiple choice, the mode was the easiest way I had of demonstrating I knew the material. I could speak, but unless it was premeditated I might not express myself clearly. On paper, I had the time and the focus to give a properly phrased proper answer. It was about demonstrating my abilities, which is another word for showing off.
Then there were the big standardized tests. I got a chance to take the ACT in the 7th grade, scored decently, and took it again in the 10th grade. I did pretty well, and decided not to take it again. It wasn't because I didn't love the test format; no, educated guessing there was applied to levels that I'd never used it before. It was because it cost money, and I wasn't the one paying for it. I could've asked, and my parents could've given easily, but I was shy about asking for it, because I'd already done well.
AP tests were great because they were subject-based, but more difficult than the ACT. For me, I wanted the challenge; if it wasn't there, I felt like I was wasting my time. The multiple choice was beautiful, and the essays, once I knew how to write them, just flowed. The topics were amazing... it was like I was being given 90 minutes to write on my heart's desire. If I recall correctly, an essay question for the AP English exam was on Emily Dickenson and Robert Frost, who at the time were two of my favorite poets. I did fail the AP Calculus exam, but if anything it just made me more willing to take Calculus in college. (To be fair, I had no Calculus teacher.)
Then college. Still loved tests. Math tests were the best, because it was just me, a pencil, and paper against the problem, where I would cut my wits against it. One professor, a British man who was only personable in class, would say things like, "Generally, if I can do the test in 15 minutes, it's a good 60 minute test for you." I felt pride when I did the test in 25 minutes. I was still a show-off.
Finally, the GREs came. These would be the last major test I would take. (The forthcoming Oral Exams, which I await with dread apprehension, don't count.) The tests were a dream for me. I went in one summer morning, about a month after my last exam. First there was the written part, where they can give you any topic to write on and any argument or two to analyze/criticize. Talk about fun, it was just like writing in my journal. Then I started the quantitative. The test gave immediate feedback about how well I was doing in the difficulty of questions, and the questions uniformly got harder and harder. Finally I was out of my depth but swimming anyhow, making best guesses after spending a certain amount of time on each question. Then the qualitative, which was more difficult and perhaps more fretful, but I still had some fun with it too.
And the subject test for English was icing on that delicious, delicious cake. Even if there were some questions I didn't have a clue about.
I guess what I'm trying to express with this... oh dear, it must appear like a catalogue of self-congratulatory victories... is that quizzes and tests are for me like trivia. By being able to demonstrate knowledge in a certain area, I feel rewarded - self-rewarded - because I can know I know something. And when I get something right I don't know, I learn the right answer and experience the thrill, like in trivia, of beating the system.
I consider quizzes, tests, and their ilk to be games as well. They ... amuse me.
In elementary school, the tests were an easy demonstration of my abilities. I would race others trying to finish the multiplication facts first. In spelling tests, where races were impossible, it was about accuracy. Science and social studies were both easy, being only facts. I had a little difficulty with reading tests, because they didn't always ask about facts, but for interpretation. Even there, I liked them though because they were challenging, and we got to read stuff.
In state standardized testing, I found a new love. I learned how to guess. Of course, in first and second grade the questions were absurdly easy ("What does the Earth look like?" to a kid that inhaled astronomy books like candy). But there were some that I might not know. I felt special because I knew how to narrow down the choices, and I knew enough to do so meaningfully.
Even as middle and high school came on and the tests became more written and less multiple choice, the mode was the easiest way I had of demonstrating I knew the material. I could speak, but unless it was premeditated I might not express myself clearly. On paper, I had the time and the focus to give a properly phrased proper answer. It was about demonstrating my abilities, which is another word for showing off.
Then there were the big standardized tests. I got a chance to take the ACT in the 7th grade, scored decently, and took it again in the 10th grade. I did pretty well, and decided not to take it again. It wasn't because I didn't love the test format; no, educated guessing there was applied to levels that I'd never used it before. It was because it cost money, and I wasn't the one paying for it. I could've asked, and my parents could've given easily, but I was shy about asking for it, because I'd already done well.
AP tests were great because they were subject-based, but more difficult than the ACT. For me, I wanted the challenge; if it wasn't there, I felt like I was wasting my time. The multiple choice was beautiful, and the essays, once I knew how to write them, just flowed. The topics were amazing... it was like I was being given 90 minutes to write on my heart's desire. If I recall correctly, an essay question for the AP English exam was on Emily Dickenson and Robert Frost, who at the time were two of my favorite poets. I did fail the AP Calculus exam, but if anything it just made me more willing to take Calculus in college. (To be fair, I had no Calculus teacher.)
Then college. Still loved tests. Math tests were the best, because it was just me, a pencil, and paper against the problem, where I would cut my wits against it. One professor, a British man who was only personable in class, would say things like, "Generally, if I can do the test in 15 minutes, it's a good 60 minute test for you." I felt pride when I did the test in 25 minutes. I was still a show-off.
Finally, the GREs came. These would be the last major test I would take. (The forthcoming Oral Exams, which I await with dread apprehension, don't count.) The tests were a dream for me. I went in one summer morning, about a month after my last exam. First there was the written part, where they can give you any topic to write on and any argument or two to analyze/criticize. Talk about fun, it was just like writing in my journal. Then I started the quantitative. The test gave immediate feedback about how well I was doing in the difficulty of questions, and the questions uniformly got harder and harder. Finally I was out of my depth but swimming anyhow, making best guesses after spending a certain amount of time on each question. Then the qualitative, which was more difficult and perhaps more fretful, but I still had some fun with it too.
And the subject test for English was icing on that delicious, delicious cake. Even if there were some questions I didn't have a clue about.
I guess what I'm trying to express with this... oh dear, it must appear like a catalogue of self-congratulatory victories... is that quizzes and tests are for me like trivia. By being able to demonstrate knowledge in a certain area, I feel rewarded - self-rewarded - because I can know I know something. And when I get something right I don't know, I learn the right answer and experience the thrill, like in trivia, of beating the system.
Jan 7, 2009
K is for Knights
Kuh-Nig-Hets
You may think that, as a child, I looked up to knighthood as the flower of everything awesome, even making flowers look cooler in the process. Maybe I pretended to joust unknown enemies, save ladies, and unmask evil.
No. First off, saving ladies wasn't in my interests when I was little; they could save themselves if they needed it, and I was pretty gender neutral anyway about who I saved. (Gender neutral rescues: see Indiana Jones's dad, Han Solo, Princess Leia, Captain Picard, Jean Grey, etc.) Second, jousting is such an inefficient mode of settling affairs when you have guns, a bullwhip, lasers, and superpowers. (Generally two at a time.) Third, I already knew what the evil was. It was Nazis.
My pretend-scape consisted of a conglomeration of Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Star Trek, X-men, and every other bit of science fiction I could get my hands on. It was awesome. Knights, in contrast, didn't hold up well. Swords were cool, armor was cool, reading about them was cool, but it wasn't what I saw myself as. Arguably, I had some chivalry going on, but more properly speaking it was a combination of good superhero ethos and Boy Scouts (which has oblique ties to Arthurian themes). Knights, at best, resembled those people in First Knight, which Mom took me to the theater to see. (I still wonder about that choice.)
I started playing video game RPGs in middle school, which often featured lots of swords and medieval themes. I first ran into King Arthur and Shakespeare at that time, and both had knights. I began to like them, but it never was truly internalized. At most, my already nascent disposition to do good was kindled, and I grew a slight fondness for medieval fairs.
The flirtation lasted for a long time. All through high school, they were one of many interests. (I loved - and still love - way too many things for me to devote attention to all of them.) The shift increasingly toward knights was gradual, and not met by a decreasing attention to my pretend-scape. Romantic poetry pricked my thumb, and I was carried away by La Belle Dame Sans Merci and The Lady of Shallot. Other poetry followed. A math professor called me a Renaissance man, which to me is an upmost compliment and close to knights. Cyrano de Bergerac, though not a sir, may as well have been one. In Western Civilization I, we spent an entire half-semester on the medieval period, and though the topic of choice was historiography (what a semester!) I read plenty about knights. I read plenty of fantasy with knights in it, saw plenty of movies with them. Exposure creeped on and on, and it stuck with me. As late as my sophomore year of high school, it was still latent. I still planned to study the twentieth century, and I knew that meant (post-)modernism. I wanted to dance with Sylvia Plath late into the night. I could prick my finger with Neil Gaiman. Jack Kerouac wouldn't be beyond my abilities. And I could delve into science-fiction or fantasy on occasion. It was a plan.
Then as a requirement I took British Culture to 1660, an English course taught by the professor that would become my thesis advisor and one of my favorite professors. For me, it started as a fun requirement. We read Beowulf all the way through. I'd only read it in parts. I loved it. Then we read Middle English poems with knights and ladies, allegories, fairies, and so on. I loved it more. Then we read parts of Le Morte Darthur. It was a strange little book, obviously written by an amateur who nonetheless had such a love for his subject that I was caught up with its energy. I loved the archaicisms, the fights, the occasional tenuous continuity. The knights were good, but not perfect. They were priveleged, but they were human. And I truly loved them then, loved them for what they could be, and could live with what they were. We read I Henry IV after that, and enough otherwise to get me smitten with the Renaissance. But I am writing about knights.
After that, I couldn't get enough. I wrote on Le Morte Darthur for a Feminist Literary Theory course. I took a class on Women Writers in Early English Literature. I loved the knights where they came up (especially in Marie de France), and grew to love new things as well in medieval spirit visions, the querelle des femmes, and so on. And so on. And so on.
Today, I can't imagine myself without knights or ladies at least sometimes running around in my head, both errantly and critically. They are unfortunately gendered and flawed as an ideal and a historical reality, but I'm smitten anyhow with the entire deal: the armor, the sword, the shield, the lance, the quest, the castle, the joust, the ethos, and all the thematic potentials that arise. It's one reason why I'm a medievalist. But I couldn't have imagined it ten or even five years ago.
You may think that, as a child, I looked up to knighthood as the flower of everything awesome, even making flowers look cooler in the process. Maybe I pretended to joust unknown enemies, save ladies, and unmask evil.
No. First off, saving ladies wasn't in my interests when I was little; they could save themselves if they needed it, and I was pretty gender neutral anyway about who I saved. (Gender neutral rescues: see Indiana Jones's dad, Han Solo, Princess Leia, Captain Picard, Jean Grey, etc.) Second, jousting is such an inefficient mode of settling affairs when you have guns, a bullwhip, lasers, and superpowers. (Generally two at a time.) Third, I already knew what the evil was. It was Nazis.
My pretend-scape consisted of a conglomeration of Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Star Trek, X-men, and every other bit of science fiction I could get my hands on. It was awesome. Knights, in contrast, didn't hold up well. Swords were cool, armor was cool, reading about them was cool, but it wasn't what I saw myself as. Arguably, I had some chivalry going on, but more properly speaking it was a combination of good superhero ethos and Boy Scouts (which has oblique ties to Arthurian themes). Knights, at best, resembled those people in First Knight, which Mom took me to the theater to see. (I still wonder about that choice.)
I started playing video game RPGs in middle school, which often featured lots of swords and medieval themes. I first ran into King Arthur and Shakespeare at that time, and both had knights. I began to like them, but it never was truly internalized. At most, my already nascent disposition to do good was kindled, and I grew a slight fondness for medieval fairs.
The flirtation lasted for a long time. All through high school, they were one of many interests. (I loved - and still love - way too many things for me to devote attention to all of them.) The shift increasingly toward knights was gradual, and not met by a decreasing attention to my pretend-scape. Romantic poetry pricked my thumb, and I was carried away by La Belle Dame Sans Merci and The Lady of Shallot. Other poetry followed. A math professor called me a Renaissance man, which to me is an upmost compliment and close to knights. Cyrano de Bergerac, though not a sir, may as well have been one. In Western Civilization I, we spent an entire half-semester on the medieval period, and though the topic of choice was historiography (what a semester!) I read plenty about knights. I read plenty of fantasy with knights in it, saw plenty of movies with them. Exposure creeped on and on, and it stuck with me. As late as my sophomore year of high school, it was still latent. I still planned to study the twentieth century, and I knew that meant (post-)modernism. I wanted to dance with Sylvia Plath late into the night. I could prick my finger with Neil Gaiman. Jack Kerouac wouldn't be beyond my abilities. And I could delve into science-fiction or fantasy on occasion. It was a plan.
Then as a requirement I took British Culture to 1660, an English course taught by the professor that would become my thesis advisor and one of my favorite professors. For me, it started as a fun requirement. We read Beowulf all the way through. I'd only read it in parts. I loved it. Then we read Middle English poems with knights and ladies, allegories, fairies, and so on. I loved it more. Then we read parts of Le Morte Darthur. It was a strange little book, obviously written by an amateur who nonetheless had such a love for his subject that I was caught up with its energy. I loved the archaicisms, the fights, the occasional tenuous continuity. The knights were good, but not perfect. They were priveleged, but they were human. And I truly loved them then, loved them for what they could be, and could live with what they were. We read I Henry IV after that, and enough otherwise to get me smitten with the Renaissance. But I am writing about knights.
After that, I couldn't get enough. I wrote on Le Morte Darthur for a Feminist Literary Theory course. I took a class on Women Writers in Early English Literature. I loved the knights where they came up (especially in Marie de France), and grew to love new things as well in medieval spirit visions, the querelle des femmes, and so on. And so on. And so on.
Today, I can't imagine myself without knights or ladies at least sometimes running around in my head, both errantly and critically. They are unfortunately gendered and flawed as an ideal and a historical reality, but I'm smitten anyhow with the entire deal: the armor, the sword, the shield, the lance, the quest, the castle, the joust, the ethos, and all the thematic potentials that arise. It's one reason why I'm a medievalist. But I couldn't have imagined it ten or even five years ago.
J is for Juice
When video games are translated into English and ported over from Japan, oftentimes they'll hide the fact that the characters are drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes to get a lower rating from the ESRB. Since cigarettes are mainly just unmentionables in cutscenes, they can be removed entirely. But alcohol has some import to the story, and gets mentioned in such a way that it can't be erased so easily. What, then, do they change to?
My favorite is juice. Rich with sugar, it surely explains the slurred speech and reactions of the people under its influence. Guild member fence guy, there's no harm in losing a drinking match to Kyle when you're drinking juice! And that time earlier when Kyle had slurred speech and everything? He's just resting off a bad break-up, possibly aided by juice! I bet that exotic tropical fruit berry beverage feels quite refreshing in between acts of air piracy, Vyse! It's cool how they made this cafe look just like a bar, complete with an evil hallucinatory device hiding in the back room!
I can halfway understand why they censor beer and liquor. In RPG settings the heroes and heroines are mainly 15, 16, 17, or 18 years old. (The one aged over twenty is an old fogey.) They can't be drinking that young. A common joke for the younger ones is them walking into a bar and being offered milk or juice because they're too young to drink ... coffee. (Remember, the bar's a cafe, a restaurant, a soda fountain, a watering hole, anything but a bar.) Sometimes though they get the real stuff... that is, the real juice... and it tastes great.
So we tend to censor alcohol use. The Japanese, however, don't. And as a culture, they aren't that lax. Why then are we so tense and uptight about it? I'm not sure about alcohol use in Japan, but here we turn it into a taboo, which transforms into a fetish, which becomes a forbidden concoction and unofficial rite of passage. Teens look up to it. We turn toward it unceasingly. It's the adult drink, the drink of choice at parties, dinners, and Emory University meetings. That's fine. I just wonder whether we would have less alcohol problems (overdrinking, alcoholics, etc.) if we stopped trying to edit alcohol out of everything children will touch. They will see it, whether it's in their parents drinking, their friends drinking, drinking in movies, beer commercials, or whatever. Video games don't warrant any special sort of censorship in that regard.
I don't care whether we drink less, but I want us to drink better. As for myself, I'm not a heavy drinker. Loving sugar more than alcohol (and arguably spazzing out with it more) I wouldn't mind having a party running on juice. Maybe those video game characters have something going there. Buster Bluth would be proud of me. Let's go for it.
My favorite is juice. Rich with sugar, it surely explains the slurred speech and reactions of the people under its influence. Guild member fence guy, there's no harm in losing a drinking match to Kyle when you're drinking juice! And that time earlier when Kyle had slurred speech and everything? He's just resting off a bad break-up, possibly aided by juice! I bet that exotic tropical fruit berry beverage feels quite refreshing in between acts of air piracy, Vyse! It's cool how they made this cafe look just like a bar, complete with an evil hallucinatory device hiding in the back room!
I can halfway understand why they censor beer and liquor. In RPG settings the heroes and heroines are mainly 15, 16, 17, or 18 years old. (The one aged over twenty is an old fogey.) They can't be drinking that young. A common joke for the younger ones is them walking into a bar and being offered milk or juice because they're too young to drink ... coffee. (Remember, the bar's a cafe, a restaurant, a soda fountain, a watering hole, anything but a bar.) Sometimes though they get the real stuff... that is, the real juice... and it tastes great.
So we tend to censor alcohol use. The Japanese, however, don't. And as a culture, they aren't that lax. Why then are we so tense and uptight about it? I'm not sure about alcohol use in Japan, but here we turn it into a taboo, which transforms into a fetish, which becomes a forbidden concoction and unofficial rite of passage. Teens look up to it. We turn toward it unceasingly. It's the adult drink, the drink of choice at parties, dinners, and Emory University meetings. That's fine. I just wonder whether we would have less alcohol problems (overdrinking, alcoholics, etc.) if we stopped trying to edit alcohol out of everything children will touch. They will see it, whether it's in their parents drinking, their friends drinking, drinking in movies, beer commercials, or whatever. Video games don't warrant any special sort of censorship in that regard.
I don't care whether we drink less, but I want us to drink better. As for myself, I'm not a heavy drinker. Loving sugar more than alcohol (and arguably spazzing out with it more) I wouldn't mind having a party running on juice. Maybe those video game characters have something going there. Buster Bluth would be proud of me. Let's go for it.
Jan 6, 2009
H is for Hands
Cold hands = warm heart
Rough hands = lots of work
Smooth hands = affluence
Long fingernails = affluence in old China
Wrinkled hands = bath OR old age
Warm hands = cordiality
Wet hands = nervousness
Clammy hands = nervousness OR heart attack OR cold room
Greasy palms = keeps the economy moving
Fist and sickle = workers unite
Fist = rock
Raised fist = fourth down
Straight arm fist = freeze
Fist against table = damn OR call to order OR making a speech
Fig fist = screw you OR got your nose OR Goddess
Raise a hand = pick me OR hi OR high-five
Fist pound = yo, we did it!
Hands folded open = a book
With a strong hand and an outstretched arm = how Pentateuch God tells you off
Hands are a major focal point for gestures. They can move and articulate with fine enough motions to have an alphabet, a vocabulary, an entire language. They enable us to write, type, draw, touch, caress, slap, flick, punch, pick up, toss, throw, and otherwise manipulate or experience objects. They are indispensible, and I hardly know what I'd do without them.
I try to use them responsibly. I try not to hit others or flick people off. Part of living with any body part is learning how anger can animate as compulsively as my will. Hands are a key to verbal language, yes, but they also hide the language of a person's psyche behind it. They can be read, and people can see all the insecurities beneath. And I'm too much like Adam and Eve to want to appear naked before others.
Rough hands = lots of work
Smooth hands = affluence
Long fingernails = affluence in old China
Wrinkled hands = bath OR old age
Warm hands = cordiality
Wet hands = nervousness
Clammy hands = nervousness OR heart attack OR cold room
Greasy palms = keeps the economy moving
Fist and sickle = workers unite
Fist = rock
Raised fist = fourth down
Straight arm fist = freeze
Fist against table = damn OR call to order OR making a speech
Fig fist = screw you OR got your nose OR Goddess
Raise a hand = pick me OR hi OR high-five
Fist pound = yo, we did it!
Hands folded open = a book
With a strong hand and an outstretched arm = how Pentateuch God tells you off
Hands are a major focal point for gestures. They can move and articulate with fine enough motions to have an alphabet, a vocabulary, an entire language. They enable us to write, type, draw, touch, caress, slap, flick, punch, pick up, toss, throw, and otherwise manipulate or experience objects. They are indispensible, and I hardly know what I'd do without them.
I try to use them responsibly. I try not to hit others or flick people off. Part of living with any body part is learning how anger can animate as compulsively as my will. Hands are a key to verbal language, yes, but they also hide the language of a person's psyche behind it. They can be read, and people can see all the insecurities beneath. And I'm too much like Adam and Eve to want to appear naked before others.
Jan 5, 2009
V is for Vittles
Rules for feeding James:
Negative:
1. Condiments are generally not welcome. This includes mustard, ketchup, mayo, and nearly all salad dressings.
1a. If you choose to subject me to condiments anyway, keep them light. Remember, condiments complement. (That's at both fast food chains and the restaurants who think that a salad should be drenched with dressing. No.)
1b. Barbecue sauce and many kinds of marinades are not included. Generally, if it complements a meat, it's okay.
2. Nothing pickled, including pickles. They are unclean.
3. I can't stomach cucumbers. Don't even try.
3a. To a lesser extent, raw tomatoes and olives are objectionable.
4. Cottage cheese is a no.
5. In fact, if the food has more than three substantial ingredients (fruit/vegetable/dairy), then the chances I will enjoy it drop precipitously.
5a. Example: my favorite lunch from when I was a little kid until now is the cheese sandwich. Cheese + bread. Grilling optional. Don't OD on the cheese.
6. Casseroles are, for the most part, unclean. The exception is a breakfast casserole.
7. No coconut. This isn't Gilligan's Island.
8. I can't comprehend Mexican food. On good days I can tolerate it. But I don't choose Mexican out of choice ever. Forgive me.
9. No gravy. If it's necessary (as in goulash), then I'll eat the minimum amount required.
Positive:
1. Bread and meat, done without ornamentation, are already awesome.
1a. Consequently, pizzas should have only meat or mushrooms. Other ingredients are acceptable, provided that negative rule 5 is followed.
2. If a seven year old likes it, chances are that I do. I was one picky little snot when I was seven.
3. If you fix it, and it isn't made of entirely unspeakable ingredients, I will try it.
3a. If it is made of unspeakable ingredients, I will politely decline. Forgive me if my face contorts.
4. Chocolate = yes. Dark chocolate = more yes.
5. Slightly burnt is fine by me. It adds flavor.
6. You needn't fear comparison to my cooking. I can cook meat and vegetables (and the meat, I must admit, is good even if the apartment gets a little smoky each time I make it). I don't make the fancy dishes because I don't have the time.
7. If we're doing fast food, the place had better have chicken tenders/nuggets. Unadorned crispy bits of processed chicken (real chicken? who knows?). Mmmmmmm.
8. I like most sauces, but if I eat my spaghetti plain, I'm enjoying the flavor of pasta unadorned, and not rejecting the sauce.
9. Simplicity is a dish best served to me.
There are more, but that's a start. I really am remorseful that my tongue is so picky. It's not me being intentionally difficult. I really can't bear the taste of the things I list. When I have a decent-sized space, I'd like to hold a dinner party for people... my first, since I've never had the space before. I'm most remorseful because the pickiness affects the company just as much as the food. So, in advance, I apologize.
Negative:
1. Condiments are generally not welcome. This includes mustard, ketchup, mayo, and nearly all salad dressings.
1a. If you choose to subject me to condiments anyway, keep them light. Remember, condiments complement. (That's at both fast food chains and the restaurants who think that a salad should be drenched with dressing. No.)
1b. Barbecue sauce and many kinds of marinades are not included. Generally, if it complements a meat, it's okay.
2. Nothing pickled, including pickles. They are unclean.
3. I can't stomach cucumbers. Don't even try.
3a. To a lesser extent, raw tomatoes and olives are objectionable.
4. Cottage cheese is a no.
5. In fact, if the food has more than three substantial ingredients (fruit/vegetable/dairy), then the chances I will enjoy it drop precipitously.
5a. Example: my favorite lunch from when I was a little kid until now is the cheese sandwich. Cheese + bread. Grilling optional. Don't OD on the cheese.
6. Casseroles are, for the most part, unclean. The exception is a breakfast casserole.
7. No coconut. This isn't Gilligan's Island.
8. I can't comprehend Mexican food. On good days I can tolerate it. But I don't choose Mexican out of choice ever. Forgive me.
9. No gravy. If it's necessary (as in goulash), then I'll eat the minimum amount required.
Positive:
1. Bread and meat, done without ornamentation, are already awesome.
1a. Consequently, pizzas should have only meat or mushrooms. Other ingredients are acceptable, provided that negative rule 5 is followed.
2. If a seven year old likes it, chances are that I do. I was one picky little snot when I was seven.
3. If you fix it, and it isn't made of entirely unspeakable ingredients, I will try it.
3a. If it is made of unspeakable ingredients, I will politely decline. Forgive me if my face contorts.
4. Chocolate = yes. Dark chocolate = more yes.
5. Slightly burnt is fine by me. It adds flavor.
6. You needn't fear comparison to my cooking. I can cook meat and vegetables (and the meat, I must admit, is good even if the apartment gets a little smoky each time I make it). I don't make the fancy dishes because I don't have the time.
7. If we're doing fast food, the place had better have chicken tenders/nuggets. Unadorned crispy bits of processed chicken (real chicken? who knows?). Mmmmmmm.
8. I like most sauces, but if I eat my spaghetti plain, I'm enjoying the flavor of pasta unadorned, and not rejecting the sauce.
9. Simplicity is a dish best served to me.
There are more, but that's a start. I really am remorseful that my tongue is so picky. It's not me being intentionally difficult. I really can't bear the taste of the things I list. When I have a decent-sized space, I'd like to hold a dinner party for people... my first, since I've never had the space before. I'm most remorseful because the pickiness affects the company just as much as the food. So, in advance, I apologize.
Jan 2, 2009
I is for Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov is one of my favorite authors. (He is also, incidentally, one of my favorite people.)
I remember in elementary school hearing that he had died. It was 1992. Garfield, earlier that year, had celebrated Isaac Asimov's birthday. It didn't mean much to me.
A few years later, I came across a short story collection of his that Mom kept around the house, "Nine Tomorrows." I read some of the stories, but remember little about them. What I do remember was reading a snippet of one of the longer short stories in PASS (a gifted class that took the place of Reading) in sixth grade. I was impressed.
The story is of a young boy in a society a billion years in the future. Education (and subsequent careers) are highly structured, and everyone learns by having a computer automatically feed people all the information they'd ever need directly. First, at a young age, they learn how to read. Then, at 18, the computer judges what career they'd be best for and, accordingly, they receive appropriate information. He learns to read and, on a whim, decides to obtain books on a field he's interested in (I think it's quantum mechanics). He thinks it'll give him an edge, but no one else understands. When he gets there on the 18th birthday, they can't take him in. It turns out he has a brain different from the others. One of only thousands in an entire empire, he becomes an innovator, one who invents. Perfectly normal snippet, and interesting for the time. But the story went on from there.
The boy (called that now out of convenience) learns for a few years, but learns enough to grow rather dissatisfied with the societal order. He decides to go to an intellectual Olympics, a place where prospective employers choose employees. While there, he sees his old friend struggling with a chemistry presentation. He loses. When they talk later, it turns out that the methods he was imprinted with have proven obsolete. He can't be imprinted again. He can't get a job. The hero decides to try and teach him, but soon authorities learn about this.
I won't ruin the end because I can't remember it, but it had many things I love about Asimov: science, discordian social orders, advanced technologies, human heroes, rather cerebral discussions, and a setting eerie in its familiarity. I was hooked, and in the proceeding years I would buy nearly all of his novels, several short story collections, a small bit of his nonfiction, and (most recently) a rare short story compendium with a female cyborg on the back cover.
"Rather cerebral" might have caught your eye as sounding rather boring. For me at least, Asimov manages to make his dialogues sound rather natural and plainspoken. Because the stories use speculative science fiction and often involve government agents, pilots, and scientists, it can also end up being technical, political, sociological, or academic. I'm cool with that. Then, one way to describe the arc of his stories is a repeating series: description, dialogue, action. Some stories err on the side of dialogue. For me, Asimov's style is one that's refreshingly unadorned.
As a science fiction writer, his ideas have always been fresh and ingenius. He made robots into human-like entities when the usual trend was to make them monsters. He's explored several different implications of time-travel, from its use as a universal monitoring device to their ability to change time (or, paradoxically, to enable time to be as it is). I could go on and on.
He's also an ingenius person. I'd recommend his autobiographical letters, "I, Asimov." For more, there's always "It's Been a Good Life." In them is a man with a sharp memory, witty intellect, several quirks, and a generalist interest in everything. He has a PhD in chemistry, but left a university position because (first) his interests were in teaching instead of the original research that was so encouraged and (second) because he was getting paid more to write. He's written and edited tons of nonfiction books, subjects ranging between limericks, the Bible, science, history, and miscellaneous trivia. Now, he's not a flawless man. It's obvious that he's proud and boisterous and sometimes makes poor decisions despite the veneer he puts on them. Nonetheless, he's a true renaissance man, and I admire him.
Perhaps I should admire a famous medievalist (and I do: Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, amongst others). Perhaps I should admire a prominent literary theorist instead (I like several). Asimov and I have roots. I liked Asimov when I wanted to be a scientist. He's been with me for a long while now. Now that I have chosen to study literature instead, I only like him more. His ideas inspire me. His stories are interesting, and occasionally (as in The Ugly Little Boy) fill my soul. He helped form my ethical compass, my appreciation of science, my love of computers, my environmental awareness, and my positivism. I owe all this to a man I first met through a Garfield comic.
I remember in elementary school hearing that he had died. It was 1992. Garfield, earlier that year, had celebrated Isaac Asimov's birthday. It didn't mean much to me.
A few years later, I came across a short story collection of his that Mom kept around the house, "Nine Tomorrows." I read some of the stories, but remember little about them. What I do remember was reading a snippet of one of the longer short stories in PASS (a gifted class that took the place of Reading) in sixth grade. I was impressed.
The story is of a young boy in a society a billion years in the future. Education (and subsequent careers) are highly structured, and everyone learns by having a computer automatically feed people all the information they'd ever need directly. First, at a young age, they learn how to read. Then, at 18, the computer judges what career they'd be best for and, accordingly, they receive appropriate information. He learns to read and, on a whim, decides to obtain books on a field he's interested in (I think it's quantum mechanics). He thinks it'll give him an edge, but no one else understands. When he gets there on the 18th birthday, they can't take him in. It turns out he has a brain different from the others. One of only thousands in an entire empire, he becomes an innovator, one who invents. Perfectly normal snippet, and interesting for the time. But the story went on from there.
The boy (called that now out of convenience) learns for a few years, but learns enough to grow rather dissatisfied with the societal order. He decides to go to an intellectual Olympics, a place where prospective employers choose employees. While there, he sees his old friend struggling with a chemistry presentation. He loses. When they talk later, it turns out that the methods he was imprinted with have proven obsolete. He can't be imprinted again. He can't get a job. The hero decides to try and teach him, but soon authorities learn about this.
I won't ruin the end because I can't remember it, but it had many things I love about Asimov: science, discordian social orders, advanced technologies, human heroes, rather cerebral discussions, and a setting eerie in its familiarity. I was hooked, and in the proceeding years I would buy nearly all of his novels, several short story collections, a small bit of his nonfiction, and (most recently) a rare short story compendium with a female cyborg on the back cover.
"Rather cerebral" might have caught your eye as sounding rather boring. For me at least, Asimov manages to make his dialogues sound rather natural and plainspoken. Because the stories use speculative science fiction and often involve government agents, pilots, and scientists, it can also end up being technical, political, sociological, or academic. I'm cool with that. Then, one way to describe the arc of his stories is a repeating series: description, dialogue, action. Some stories err on the side of dialogue. For me, Asimov's style is one that's refreshingly unadorned.
As a science fiction writer, his ideas have always been fresh and ingenius. He made robots into human-like entities when the usual trend was to make them monsters. He's explored several different implications of time-travel, from its use as a universal monitoring device to their ability to change time (or, paradoxically, to enable time to be as it is). I could go on and on.
He's also an ingenius person. I'd recommend his autobiographical letters, "I, Asimov." For more, there's always "It's Been a Good Life." In them is a man with a sharp memory, witty intellect, several quirks, and a generalist interest in everything. He has a PhD in chemistry, but left a university position because (first) his interests were in teaching instead of the original research that was so encouraged and (second) because he was getting paid more to write. He's written and edited tons of nonfiction books, subjects ranging between limericks, the Bible, science, history, and miscellaneous trivia. Now, he's not a flawless man. It's obvious that he's proud and boisterous and sometimes makes poor decisions despite the veneer he puts on them. Nonetheless, he's a true renaissance man, and I admire him.
Perhaps I should admire a famous medievalist (and I do: Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, amongst others). Perhaps I should admire a prominent literary theorist instead (I like several). Asimov and I have roots. I liked Asimov when I wanted to be a scientist. He's been with me for a long while now. Now that I have chosen to study literature instead, I only like him more. His ideas inspire me. His stories are interesting, and occasionally (as in The Ugly Little Boy) fill my soul. He helped form my ethical compass, my appreciation of science, my love of computers, my environmental awareness, and my positivism. I owe all this to a man I first met through a Garfield comic.
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