Make Room, Make Room

Empty Shelves

Pardon the self-indulgence (honestly, what else is one going to do with a blog?), but I'm going to wallow for a moment and pour one out for my old graduate office space, which I finally locked up for the last time today. Not a moment too soon, and probably slightly late--ten minutes AFTER the next tenant comes in is cutting things officially too short. I know the room is property of the university and department, and not meant to be thought of as belonging to any individual students (or groups of students, or post-students). And I know it was selfish of me to continue squatting in the space when other graduate students were fighting for space. And I know that the space, and my attachment to it, are somewhat symptomatic of a degree it took me Too Long to complete. 

And yet... I feel a twinge of real loss at giving up access to it. It's silly to call it a home, but it was a space, a place, that was mine for a very long time. I spent eight years, give or take, in that office; I've dwelt there longer than any other place since moving to Kitchener-Waterloo. In fact, I've dwelt there longer than any place since moving out of my parents' house sixteen years ago. It was a bit of continuity in a changing life, and I'll miss it.

So it goes, and time marches on. Onwards, upwards, and so forth to whatever comes next.

(And yes, I see the resonance between a graduate space that I've clinged to for too long and this blog. So don't think pointing it out is clever or something.)

Later Days.

A Book, a Loaf of Bread, and Thou--and no offense, but the Bread and the Thou are optional

I just had one of the most relaxing Sunday afternoons of my life. It was very simple; I walked around for a bit, I stopped, and I read for a while. Once at a coffee shop while I had lunch, once on campus, once in the park, and once in another coffee shop while sipping on a frappaccino. And each time, I'd rotate between reading a chapter in one of four books: Brian Staveley's The Providence of Fire (high fantasy fare--also, incidentally, a great title); Darowski's The Ages of the X-Men (an edited essay collection discussing the X-Men chronologically); Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov (my first foray into classic literature in a LONG time); and Enevold and MacCallum-Stewart's Game Love (an edited essay collection on play and affection in games).

All of the books were satisfying. The Providence of Fire had various maneuverings and fights, and The Brothers Karamazov had the first but not the second; in general, BK has proven to be a book that's not really about anything but a very close look at the lives of the title characters. The bit I read today covered a long monologue from Ivan about an imaginary confrontation with God to Alyosha returning to the monastery. Ages of the X-Men had four essays about various aspects of the X-Men early years--the cultural understanding of mutants in America leading up to the X-Men's debut, the way the 60s comics depicted Cold War negotiiations and promoted the commune (two separate essays there), and the way the 70s Claremont-relaunch was driven initially by market concerns. I read an essay from each of Game Love's sections, which meant one from Waern on how players express love for NPCs in Dragon Age: Origins, one from Brown on interviews from erotic role-players in World of Warcraft, one from Lenio taking an exceptionally ontological view of what it means to love an NPC, and finally, a rather lengthy essay criticizing the way sustained videogame play is framed in terms of addiction, whether that's in terms of cognitive science, psychology, or holistically as compensation for a lack in the player's lives.

But to be honest, very little of the above had any impact on why I found the day so relaxing. The content of the books didn't matter. The exact locations didn't matter. The rigidity of the formula--four readings, four locations, repeat--didn't matter. What matters is that I sat in a public space for a while and read a book. And that act, in whatever variation it might unfold, is like a cup of tea straight to my soul.

Reading alone at home doesn't put me in that state; neither does reading on the bus, or playing videogames, in public or private. Neither does walking through a place, or talking with someone else on a park bench or hanging out at a coffee shop. Don't get me wrong; I like all of those things, quite a bit. But none of those are relaxing in the same way that today was. If I had to put it into words, I enjoy being in one place while the world flows around me, and the world and I are content to let each other be. I have a hunch that this would be my ideal vacation too--go to somewhere exotic and, instead of seeing the sights or doing adventurous stuff, simply sitting in a corner and watch a different part of the world unfold without worrying about a deadline or whether I should be doing something else.

I've known this about myself for quite some time, and in the spring especially, I like to stop in the park on a bench on the way home from work and indulge for a half hour or so; spending basically a full day at it like today is nice but not necessary. And it always puts me in a good mood for the evening.

I'm curious, though, if it extends the other way. If I get up in the morning and spend a half hour on a park bench before I reach work, will that tranquility be instilled into the whole day? Will it give me at least a morning boost? Or would morning crankiness and work grind chip away at my zen?

Might be worth finding out.

What's your secret to tranquility?

Later Days.

On Bronies and Responsibility

I came across this post recently on the subject of bronies, male fans of My Little Pony. This is my lack of Tumblr knowledge showing, but I find it hard to parse exactly who said what in that conversation, so I'll sum up the whole thing (and trigger warnings for sexual assault in a situation that involves the potential for that, though it doesn't happen):

The original poster is relating the events of a My Little Pony Convention, where she met an 11 year old girl full of MLP enthusiasm. The same girl came to her the next day, scared, because she was being stalked by an older male brony who was trying to get her alone in his hotel room. The poster and her friend rallied around the girl, hid her, and pushed the brony away for the rest of the convention. And she concludes that she's angry she is that this space for kids was being turned into something gross and sexual and entirely about the bronies involved. And she is absolutely right; that's absolutely gross and wrong.

The responses start there, mostly involving a debate over whether the poster should have gone to the police, and whether any good would have come out of that. The general consensus is that both the convention holders and the police would be very reluctant to take any action until something outright criminal occurs, which is incredibly depressing and probably accurate. What I wanted to emphasize, though, is the first sentence of the last paragraph: "I’m going to lay it on the line here: If you identify as a Brony and you do NOT call out this behavior when you see it, you are a piece of shit. ... You’re a dude who likes MLP? That’s awesome! I hope you get much joy of it. But if that joy comes at the harm and expense of little kids then fuck you. Seriously."

So in light of that, it's time to talk about what My Little Pony means to me, and what responsibilities that gives me.

First: I totally get the obvious objection, that the whole point here is that an unwanted group is taking a show affiliated with a fandom and warping it all to be about them, and by centering this discussion on what MLP means to me I'm doing the same thing. I can only ask that you hear me out; this post is about working through what the show means to me in order to build for myself how I can support it. With that proviso...

 A lot of the specifics here don't apply to me exactly. I *like* MLP, in the sense that I'll go out of my way to watch it, and there's a lot it does that I'm a big fan of, which I'll probably get into later. But I don't consider myself a brony, on the basis that the concept of brony has become so toxic to me that I want to go out of my way to avoid that label and because I'd never go to a convention for it, both because my level of fandom isn't quite that high and because I don't like going to conventions in general; whenever there's a situation where there's a large number of people I don't know and my own role in that group is undefined, unless I have a very compelling reason to attend, I'd rather stay home. My anxiety issues don't handle crowds well. (The difference, in case you were wondering, between that and a conference situation is that at a conference, my role is defined, especially if I'm giving a paper.)

And all of that is equivocating nonsense. The issue here isn't to measure exactly what kind of fan I am. The issue is whether I'm willing to stand against those who would warp MLP into something that comes at the extent and harm of an audience that can't defend itself. In the past, I've deliberately avoided the brony question because I didn't want to get involved; I thought if I avoided putting a clear label on my own interest on the show, I could get away with just enjoying the show on my own terms. Well, as I've said elsewhere online today, escapism is a political statement, and a choice in itself. Saying I'm just here to enjoy myself and not hurt anyone stops being enough when people who do want to hurt someone show up.  The tl;dr version of this post is that I want to be someone who would stand against the people described in that tumblr, and I want the writing of this post to be a first step towards that.

I think the sexualization of MLP characters is absolutely gross because it's alienating to an audience that shouldn't have to worry about that, and it's so antithetical to what the show is about. As for what it is about, that's not hard--it's right there in the show's subtitle, "Friendship is magic." It is a show about six friends with very different personalities and interests, and how they stay friends both in spite of and because of those differences. At its best, it stays true to those characters and those friendships above all else, and that's what I personally find appealing about it. That it does so with humor and long-term world building, that it's presenting these characters to young girls who are bombarded with media messages about how they should be competing in terms of looks and shunning those who are different, that, for the most part, it respects those fans and doesn't talk down to them---all of that is icing on the friendship cake, as far as I'm concerned. (That "talking down" point is a little iffy; in the early seasons especially the episodes tended to end with the lead character literally writing a letter that told what lesson she learned from the episode. But hey, it's miles ahead of the "The More You Know" GI Joe thing.)

It's important to me that I make clear that watching MLP is not a blip in my personal media history. As a kid, I read a lot of Babysitter Club books. When I got older, it was Judy Blume. And older than that, I spent a summer reading the works of Maeve Binchy. Usually, whenever I tell anyone that, I add that it was because I'd ran out of sci-fi and fantasy books in my local rural library. And that's a lie, or at the very least, a sin of omission, and one with a sexist core. It was something I said because I didn't want people to think I read "girly" books because I actually enjoyed them. (And, if we're going for total honesty, as a teenage hetero male, books about female desire was kind of a turn on.) For most of my childhood, I felt like reading itself was considered an un-masculine past time--I had wonderfully supportive teachers, but to my own peers, books--and any level of effort in school in general, beyond the bare minimum--were weird and uncool. And being caught with the latest Ann M. Martin was just going to make things worse for me.  That doesn't excuse not owning up to it in the past decade, though; my only excuse is that a childhood is a hard thing to put behind you, as my collections of dreams in any particular week could attest.

I've also been a fan of certain TV shows that unfold on similar lines: Gilmore Girls, Nashville,  Gossip Girl. I have a very, very high standard for rom-coms, but when I find one I like, I'll praise it for ages, like My Best Friend's Wedding or Fever Pitch (okay, high but eccentric standard). The first 30 minutes of Frozen rocked my world.  Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane was one of my favorite titles Marvel ever published. What all of these things have in common are, for me, the reason why I turned to those "girlie" books to get something that the YA sci-fi of Heinlein or Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy just weren't supplying for me: emotional depth. A large portion of Western fiction is centered around action, around characters who are trying to get something accomplished above all else. These other stories that attracted (and attract) me aren't about that, not primarily; they're more about just being. They're stories that recognize that people are filled with these strange, overwhelming impulses, and they focus more on how we can relate to those impulses and relate to others through them. And that mattered to me. It's not that the other stories don't do that--Dan Harmon's shows, Community, and Rick & Morty, are both examples of shows that tend more towards zany meta-narratives, but also keep a core of emotion to them. (His big complaint about rom-coms, incidentally, is basically the inverse of this, that they're all the emotion part with no discernible action.) But so much of Western masculinity seems to be tied up in hiding the fact that we're all dealing with this inner turmoil. Shows that are overtly about characters working their way through these emotions, trying to become better people in the process--all that matters to me.

Granted, it's not something I'd want to watch exclusively, or read exclusively; heart-wrenching can become over-wrenched, with too much exposure, and this type of story can lend itself to melodrama very quickly (I'm looking at you, The Notebook). But experiencing media where people openly struggle with their own inner depths appeals to me--and, this probably goes without saying, gives me impetus to express my own. Now, I'm not saying every episode of MLP is a deep journey into the inner psyches of magical horses. But it certainly isn't a show about a positive set of role models from young girls and turning them into sex fantasies. Rather, it is a show about how friends can explore who they want to be in the comfort of other friends. And I want to defend the right of those who aren't in a position to defend themselves to be able to do the same. I don't know if this post is a step towards that, but it is a step towards me realizing that I have a responsibility to do so.

Later Days. 

And Bill Murray saw his shadow, and his heart grew three sizes that day. Or something.

Are you ready for the dumbest life-changing event ever?

A while ago, I was reading up on a blog, where the author had posited a game:

Boil a movie's moral/plot into a single sentence, usually with humorous consequence. For example: 
I, Robot: Racial prejudice is entirely justified, and all those people who think we can get along are just dupes blinded to the secret cabal who rules the world and plans to murder us all when the time is right!

And so forth. It took off big in the comments, where people expanded on points, argued, and came up with their own examples, which is basically how the internet is supposed to work. The whole was amusing, in a look-how-clever-we-are kind of way, which is how the internet actually works, at least, when it's not terrible. And then I ran into this one, from the comments section:

Groundhog Day: Your life sucks more than you realize, and won’t improve until you pull your head out of your ass and do something about it.

It was... a gut punch, if I'm being honest. For reasons better left unsaid, I felt like it was a statement that cut directly to my own situation. And yeah, it sucks to have a situation that can be summed up so succinctly by such a negative statement. (In fact, it sucks more than you realize. Ahem.) But I didn't do anything about it, because it was easier not to do anything about it. And six months passed, and nothing changed, and it really isn't that bad, and I do like my life, and my friends and my family, and it's mostly just me I'm not so crazy about, and it's easy enough to ignore yourself if you have enough good things going on. So I carry on. I have a good time. But now, whenever anything goes sour, I've got the Groundhog Day mantra always lurking in my head, ready to jump in the moment my enthusiasm flags: "Your life sucks more than you realize, and won't improve until you pull your head out of your ass and do something about it."

And again, for reasons better left unsaid, something happened last night that brought the whole thing up again. I don't think anyone noticed my existential crisis (which of course creates its own crisis: Is no one noticing because I'm really good at lying and deceiving my friends? Or is it because no one cares?) but it was the proverbial back-breaking straw. I want to be better. I want something better. And it's not because this is bad, but because it doesn't fit me as well as it used to.

Problem being, of course, I don't have any idea what that means. So I'm trying a bunch of different things, and we'll see what sticks. This blogpost is part of that, actually. I'm not really comfortable presenting this level of honesty and emotional vulnerability to the world, but I figure if I actually put what I'm feeling into words--even oblique words that feature the phrase "better left unsaid" with such emotional cadence that I might as well shoved in a set of ellipses in 40 size font, then I'd be pushed into actually doing something. So let's get the head out of the ass. Let's see what's out there.

Later Days.

A Mundane Voyage of Self-Discovery

So about a month ago, I realized something about myself. Let me set the scene:

A friend in my graduate program was considering constructing a reading course for herself on the subject of games and feminism, and asked if I could suggest anything. I could. In fact, I pretty much stopped what I was doing, and spent the next hour or two developing a list. And it was after I sent it to her and felt a mild ping of satisfaction that I came to my self-realization.

I really like making lists.

Cross-checking databases, compiling information, gathering sources--this is my wheelhouse. I don't mean to say that any of these activities are fun. Because they're not, not really. It's not about fun--it's about doing something that I find personally satisfying. Why, I'm not sure. It may be the sense of mild accomplishment, or the pleasure of organizing something. And again, "the pleasure of organizing" sounds weird, until you stop and think that cleaning a room or cooking can both be loosely referred to in those terms. I've heard it said that the chief pleasure of many videogames, from Tetris to DOOM, is that they're all games about cleaning things up, whether it's errant tetrads of demon-spawned monsters. So even my videogame passion can be explained in terms of this satisfaction.

The weird thing is, this preference came like a huge shock to me, when it's a pattern I've preferred my whole life. Two years ago, I took it upon myself to set up a catalog of the department library's books. Whenever I get ready to write a paper, the first thing I do is read all the relevant research, summarize it, summarize the summary, summarize the summary of the summary, and collate it into my summary database. (Ok, I'll admit--that one's insane.) I've got a database filled with game blog criticism that runs over 600 entries, each typed by yours truly. Hell, this blog can be seen as one very long example of the tendency, especially the Bibliophile posts which are basically a never-ending task of combing databases and typing out commentary.

Psychologically speaking, a quick google search on this sort of tunnel-vission-esque obsessive working pulls up Asperger's Syndrome, specifically the part that references "an intense focus on topics of special interest" as a symptom. I don't think that's quite what's going on with me; for one thing, that description covers 90% of everyone who had a hobby, most Canadians during the Olympic hockey games, and everyone who ever went to grad school. For another, the same document says that another major symptom is being frustrated with having to do mundane and boring tasks, and this *is* a mundane and boring task.

So I don't know exactly what my list-like (can't think of a good word for it--database drive? search pleasure?) means in terms of the big book of What's Wrong With the Modern Human. But since I'm now aware of it, it means I can use it. Maybe not get rid of it, per se, but be aware of how it affects my actions. If I'm spending too long on the research phase of a project, it's time to reign it in. Counterwise, if I'm looking for what I can add a group project, I can push it in a useful direction. That, I think, is the real benefit to knowing yourself. Not necessarily trying to change towards something you're not, or something you can't do (though incremental change in a direction is usually possible), but knowing your strengths and how to shape events around yourself to best utilize those strengths.

Or maybe I should stick to talking about videogames.

Later Days.

Space: The Old Frontier

If you ask people what their favorite Trek is, the odds are you'll get an answer based on age. Those who were around for the original series speak confidently about being around when it all started. Those who were teenagers in the 90s speak enthusiastically about Next Generation, and how it modernized everything into a sleek new appeal. Those born a few years later will defend Voyager (although generally, what they're actually defending is "hey, that Borg chick was hot, and the hologram doctor was cool). And I'm sure there's a generation now who will defend nuTrek as being the most exciting of all possible worlds.

No one defends Enterprise. No one.

But for my money, my favorite is always the black sheep of the group, Deep Space Nine. Yes, okay, it was riffing off, if not ripping off, Babylon Five. And yes, it was dark, in tone and in lighting. (Cardassians apparently are not the most gregarious of interior decorators.) But it had and has so much in its favor. First, it's still the only Trek that stayed in one place. Arguably, that's a point against it: exploration is ingrained as a Trek element ever since a certain ship set out on its five year mission. But being stationary meant that it could explore the cultures of the races around it much more.(Plus, from a fancy scholar perspective, there's a lot troubling about a civilization that has its roots in Western culture going around on a never-ending colonial expansion quest.) Yes, we still had episodes about the culture of the week, but there was a lot more chance to get really deep into the established cultures: Cardassian, Bajoran, Dominion, and even Ferengi. After DS9, there was depth to the Ferengi culture. That still seems like it should have been impossible.

Going back way back, I once set up some criteria for what I look for in a show: good set pieces, a long term plot, character development, dialogue, and characters. Dialogue is probably the weak point for DS9; not that it's bad, it's just that it can be hit or miss. It has some great one liners and great scenes, but also some real clunkers. This is the fate of a show with a lot of different writers. In terms of set pieces, there are some really appealing episodes; comedy-wise, the time-travelling "Trials and Tribble-ations" is a great salute to the original series. And "In the Pale Moonlight" is a wonderful take-down of Star Trek optimism for something more complex and sinister. Character-wise, it's an ensemble cast down to its core, with traditional Starfleet types (Bashir, the bright-eyed doctor, Dax, the cheery second-in-command, the workmanship of O'Brien, and and the brash captain style of Sisko) clashing with the more jaded world views of the revolutionist Kira, the isolated Odo, the cheerful skullduggery of Garak, and the scheming Quark. As for character development, I make fun of Voyager a lot, but the one thing it did absolutely right is center the later seasons around Seven of Nine's growth towards humanity, and the earlier seasons around the Doctor's experience of the same. The other characters are kind of splotchy--Kim, Paris, B'Lanna, Janeway, Chekotay sort of reach a certain point, and remain static. DS9, on the other hand, puts all of its characters on a trajectory, and you can see how their relationships and their selves evolve over time. And that leaves its high point, plot. More than any other Trek, Deep Space Nine kept its continuity. The war with the Dominion, its big overarching plot, lasted for whole seasons, and really gave a sense that something was going on that affected the entire universe. And you need to remember, this is the 90s--before DVR, Netflix, and streaming, networks were basically disincentivized to do dramas with continuity; if viewers missed an episode, the only possibility was to wait and hope it randomly showed up in the reruns. So for the long-form show to even exist, there had to be a struggle. (Which probably explains why Voyager adopted a more episodic approach.) That DS9 tried for that struggle, and succeeded to the degree it did, matters. It paved the way for later continuity-heavy sci-fi, such as Battlestar Galactica (not least because Ron Moore was one of the writers hired for later DS9 episodes).

But if I argued that my attachment to the show was entirely objective or historical, I'd be lying. It mattered to me. It matters to me. Basically, I watched the show through twice. The first time, I was in high school. I had spent most of my youth being culturally deprived, as my parents didn't have cable. (That mattered! I had a lot of strikes against me as a kid--not being able to relate to the shows the cool kids were talking about did not help! Although if I hadn't resorted to teh books instead, who knows where I'd be now.) So it was a big deal when my father the teacher gave me permission to use the elementary school's cable to tape whatever I wanted. I kind of went nuts with it; I remember spending long sessions staring at the TV guide, trying to decipher which channels on the elementary school TV corresponded to which stations in the book. It must have been season 5 or so before I caught on to the tail end of DS9 in my TV trawling, but I remember being hooked right away. Until then, I had been a STNG type--DS9 was too slow, and too political for my tastes. But the teenage brain was just in the right place for it, and thus, hooked. My brothers couldn't stand the show--they would watch Voyager with me, but didn't see why DS9 was worth taping. And we had only a single 8 hour cassette to capture a week's worth of television, so there were actually arguments over whether it deserved its place in the line-up.

And that's my interest in media culture--endlessly fascinating how we adapt something like the limitations of a 8 hr VHS tape into our lives.

The second time I watched through the series, it was in reruns. It was during the summer of 2002, which was... not a pleasant time in my life. Academically, I was still in full over-achiever mode, so that was fine. But socially, I was pretty much a disaster. I had made zero close friends in my first year of university, and I was literally spending the summer living unemployed in my parents' basement. Not a high point. The only interesting things that ever happened to me personally for four months were volunteer jobs at the local library and senior centers--which were educational in their own way, I guess. Deep Space Nine was the show on every week day at 2:00 pm--the last show, essentially, that I could watch before my family came home, and I no longer had the freedom of being alone. I want to emphasize at this point that my family has never been less than totally supportive of me--it was just my mindset at the time that any other human presence served to remind me that I was falling below my own impossible standards of success. And it mattered, then, that the last piece of my daily solitude was spending an hour with a bunch of oddballs who managed to get their shit together every week to keep the space trains running on time.

I'm bringing all of this up now because I'm currently reading my way through the AV Club reviews of Deep Space Nine. I've reached third season, and I came across this passage: "There’s a great scene early in the hour when Kira brings by a plant as a house-warming gift, and Odo, after initially not wanting to let her inside his new apartment, tells her excitedly about all his plans to try new shapes and new textures. It’s a sweet exchange between the two of them, but it also shows just how vulnerable and lonely Odo really is. He isn’t a cynic at heart; he wants to engage with life, he’s just terrified of risking a sense of self." I read that, and I felt such a pang of sympathy for Odo--and for my past self, remembering me watching that scene.

Hang in there, Odo-me. It gets better.

Later Days.

Title

My roommates asked me recently if graduates focusing in game studies can claim videogames as an expense on their taxes.  It is a good question. I've certainly claimed textbooks before, and I've certainly bought a lot of games, and spent a lot of time doing some rather close analyses of them. It's especially of interest to me of late because I recently made a rather expensive purchase: I bought a PlayStation 3.

And my reasoning--or at least my justification--was based mostly on academic reasons.  Considering what I'm interested in in game studies, the PS3 has the most attractive exclusive games: Uncharted for the cinematic storytelling, Heavy Rain for the same, the procedural rhetoric of Tokyo Jungle, Ni No Kuni, which looks absolutely beautiful, some Atlus RPGs, for their game mechanics... It was definitely a purchase made with the question "what do I need to be aware of in game studies?" in mind.

The unfortunate consequence is that, as a direct result of purchasing the thing, I've staying up relatively late.  (On the upside, I've unlocked the Pig class in Tokyo Jungle.)  And because of meetings this week (which seem to keep popping up despite my personal commitment to hermitdom), I've had to be on campus very early. The result is that I'm in sort of a fugue state.  And, being an academic, my first response is to analyze it. I can still think, I can still do my readings and writings and so forth, but it all takes a lot longer.  And there's a weird pause whenever anyone tries to get my attention, though once I'm in the conversation, I'm mostly fine. But at the same time, I get the feeling I'm saying things slightly differently, that the thoughts are coming out a little more confused than usual, that I'm saying a bit more than I would otherwise.  Maybe that's why I don't have many "personal" tagged posts these days--I was sleeping too well to be un-circumspect.

Part of what's been keeping up and trying to focus is a proposal for a book chapter, which forced me down some scholarly channels this month that were a little upstream. I don't know if it'll be accepted--I feel I went a little too light on the sources--but I think the idea I came up with is worth writing, even I need to do it on a different venue.  For a little taste, it was going to be a paper that combined a close study of Catherine for the Xbox 360 and Planescape: Torment for the PC, one of my dream pairings.

I'm rambling a little tonight.  Think I'll turn in.

Later Days.

Bibliophile: Idle Hands at Kwantlen Polytechnic University

“Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.”
― Groucho Marx, The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx

We go over a university's new books, and pick out some highlights.  We are discerning and conscientious.  We are Bibliophile.

This week, we're looking at BC's Kwantlen Polytechnic University.  More after the break.

Idiot. Just.... idiot.

I've never been very good at remembering things out of context.  I forget directions, names, faces.  I can watch a TV show for years, and be utterly unable to tell anyone the names of any of its characters if it's not going on right in front of me.  I can do the same with people that I've been around for longer.  I'm forgetful with objects, too.  If I'm okay with keeping track of my keys if I always, always transfer them immediately to my pocket after using them, but if I set them down somewhere--well, they're just gone.  After the third time I did that with a house key, I took to wearing it around my neck on a chain, the way some people do the cross.  And at the risk of sounding blasphemous, I think a part of me hoped that the key around my neck would work as a sort of talisman, warding off future evil bouts of absent-minded forgetfulness.

Yeah, that didn't work very well.

Because another category of things I'm forgetful of is dates.  More specifically, birthdays.  Even more specifically, one birthday in particular.  It's not my brothers'.  Got those locked down.  It's not my father's--I can remember that one by virtue of knowing it lands on the same day as two other people whose birthdays Facebook notifies me of.  And it's not the birthday of the dog of my new roommate whom I've known for less than two weeks, which I know because it's written on our fridge.  Nope.  It's my mom's, it was yesterday, and damn my eyes for being an inconsiderate son, because I forgot again just like I do EVERY.  SINGLE.  YEAR.  Even worse is that my poor memory was double-stacked against me.  My father (you can bet HE always remembers) sent me a text to remind me to call, but because I forgot my phone, unplugged and unpowered all day, I didn't get the message until it was too late.  (Well, almost too late; I was saved by virtue of the time difference between here and Saskatchewan--and my other got a literally eleventh hour phone call wishing her a happy birthday from the worst son ever.)

My mother is a wonderful, caring person (Actually, let's expand on that a little--it's no exaggeration to say that anything I have resembling a moral code comes from the example set by my parents; my mother has taught me  how important it is to stand up for what you believe is right, even if it means standing up against those in power, or speaking for those who have none, just by doing it herself time and again.  I could go on about that at great length, but the main subject here is how stupid I am, not the virtues of my family--otherwise, we'd be here all night), and gracefully forgave me my repeated offense, like she does every year.  Frankly, I don't think I should be let off the hook so easily.  I am a grown-ass man (you can generally tell how grown up someone is by the use of the word "ass").  At my age, people usually have a lot of responsibilities--spouses, children, proper jobs, mortgages, car payments--and they manage.  Me, I can't get a damned "save the date" right.  Not next year, though.  This ain't happening again.  I've set myself up a series of notifications: one from my work email, one from my personal email, one on the blog itself, one on Facebook, and one on my phone. Every one is set to trigger on September 6th of 2013, or the day before. Then we'll see who can and cannot remember a significant annual event.  (Okay, technically I still won't remember it, but I'll have remembered that I won't remember it, and compensated accordingly.)

The worst part is that this is the second time I've forgotten my phone in the last two months, and the second time I nearly missed an important family event, or at least wasn't as much a part of it as I should have been because of that forgetfulness.  I'm sick of doing that.  My roommates, old and new, have their family over frequently, and I often feel a pang of loss when I think of the connection I gave up when I moved here.  It's a connection that is important to me, and I feel that's grown a little more tenuous of late, and that's entirely my fault.  I don't talk to my family enough, and I don't go home enough.  The latter I can't do a lot about--finances and work keeps me away a lot.  But I can do more about the talking.  Admittedly, I really don't like talking on the phone, to anyone.  Part of that's the context thing from earlier--I have a lot of trouble following what people are saying if there isn't a clear sense of place and embodiment to them.  And there's a part of me that dreads nothing more than that static silence when no one can think of anything to say.  (One of the perils of being in game studies is that your life is rather boring to those not interested in games.)  So I let things slide, a bit.  And a bit more.  And so forth.  Okay, fine; it's hard.  It'll get easier, and it's time to make more of an effort. Mom, if you're reading this, I think the best thing that could come out of me forgetting AGAIN is that I use that mistake as a drive to reconnect with with my family.  It's not much of a gift, but I hope you'll accept it anyway.

(Unless everyone else in the family is entirely happy with the current level of communication, and will actually be bothered by my attempts to increase it, in which case, um, I mean well. Sorry.) 

Later Days.

Deeply Bohring

Niels Bohr once said that the opposite of a profound truth is also a profound truth.  He was talking about quantum mechanics or some similarly impenetrable topic, but I, like many laymen, have decided to appropriate his comment to talk about something decidedly less scholarly.  Here's a set of four profound-ish truths and their opposites; I'm going to use them to anchor the following discussion.

1.  I needed to write this post.
Opposite: I've been dreading writing this post.  

2.  I've moved recently.
Opposite: I've stayed in the same place.

3.  Location doesn't matter to me.
Opposite: Location is central to me.

4.  I'm a solitary person.
Opposite: I'm a social person.

All right; the first two are fairly easy, or at least comparatively easy.  Whenever something big happens me, I feel a need to blog about it, but at the same time, I often avoid blogging about it, because so much has happened that sorting through everything I've felt and experienced leaves me kind of drained.  That's what usually happens in the "trip" related posts--I see so much during the trip that sorting through it all and processing it becomes a task in itself, almost apart from actually living through it the first time.  Actually, the trip comparison is pretty apt; remember that when we get to discussing point 3.  The other factor is that I've grown a lot more self-conscious about doing personal stuff on the blog since I realized just how many people I know and interact with regularly read it.  At the same time, I've always felt that it's an important part of what this blog means to me.  I don't want to wade into what's authentic in autobiography and what's not, but this has never been just an academic blog to me; I've chosen not to compartmentalize my life, and I try to reflect that here.  (Okay, yes, there are some boundaries, but they're flexible, okay?)

So that brings us to point 2: I've moved recently.  I may have mentioned here that my former roommates, the ones I have lived with for two years, and I have gone our separate ways.  In fact, we did so last Tuesday, and I've been living in a new place ever since, with two entirely new, yet unknown roommates.  In a way, I feel like I haven't moved--I'm still in the same city, in the same program (I'll finish someday, Mr. Supervisor, honest I will), still with the same group of friends.  I hung out with them tonight, in fact, and it felt like a very familiar thing; there were the people that I get along with great and admire; the people who I hang out with who, um, aren't very fond of me, but we can still hang out in a crowd, and I still admire them (really--there are very few people I actively dislike; most of them I haven't seen in a decade.  Have I been out of high school for a decade?  My, what a shocking coincidence.  Also, I should probably add that when I was out with said friends, I was drinking.  But you've probably figured that out by now.); and there are people I have hung out with for years, but still don't really know that well.  (And that's unfortunate.  Something should be done to change that.) Anyway, digressions aside, I'm in a new situation, while simultaneously being immersed in my old situation.  There's a comfort in that, but it's the kind of comfort that can hold you in place, if you let it.

Speaking of place, that's a segue of sorts into point 3.  When I say location doesn't matter to me, I mean that.  I'll willing spend hours in my narrow, tiny office.  Two or three years ago, when I went to visit Toronto, I spent most of my time deliberately cooped in a variety of libraries, and enjoying myself immensely.  And the aesthetics of a space don't really matter to me; I could live very happily out of my boxes for the next year, or I could put everything away.  I have whole reams of posters my parents have got me that are still in the original bag they came in.  I take them out every now and then and look at them, because they're pretty, but I've never bothered to put them on my walls.  I mean, what's the point?  I'd just have to take them down again eventually.  The aesthetics of my location aren't really a big issue to me.  And of course, that's true, while also being an utter lie.  If on no other level, changing location means changing routine, it means changing mental space.  It's situations such as this in which I resort to Stiegler and his technics.  Change a person's tool set, and you change the person, and tool set includes the space and place you're familiar with.  It's pretty common for people on a trip to allow themselves indulgences they wouldn't do otherwise, and act in a manner contrary to their common behavior--it's why we say "When in Rome" and "It stays in Vegas."  And when you go on a trip, it's all temporary, so you have the comfort (however false it may be) that whatever you do, you can return to the tool set you left behind when it's over.  Moving means a whole new set of tools.  Maybe you're trading in a hammer for a wrench.  Maybe you're adding a spanner to the belt.  Maybe this metaphor has been stretched to its limit.  The point is, I've noticed a big difference in my mental space.  It's in the little things--I have to remind myself which corridors to turn down to get to my room.  I need to recalculate my jogging routes so that the 5k and 10k reach just the right sweet spots.  I need to mentally think exactly where I live, since I spent three years knowing that exact location, but forgetting it every time since someone always drove me there.  (Long story.)  Space is important.  You have to center yourself literally before you can do it figuratively.

Point 4.  I've lived on my own, and I've lived with other people.  When I'm alone, it's always something of a relief.  To be able to do what you want without worrying overmuch about the context of others--it's freeing.  But it's also restrictive.  Here's a TMI case in point: when I came to the bar tonight, there was one person I recognized, and three or four friends of hers just joining the program that I didn't.  And I could have joined them.  But... it was a very loud, very noisy bar, and the thought of trying to do the whole "getting to know you" smalltalk while bellowing at full volume was exceptionally unappealing to me.  So I waited for some other people to show up.  Am I proud of this?  No.  But I'm not ashamed either, and that's an important point that took me a long time to get to.  Under other circumstances, I would have been happy to do smalltalk with any one of them, or even in a group, but my solitary inclinations made the bar scene intro uncomfortable.  But at the same time, I felt some urge to socialize, so I stuck around.  The ideal conclusion to this story would be that I did get around to talking to the "strangers" and we're all well acquainted.  That didn't happen.  But at least I got some time with the friends I have known for years, and still open to making new friends somewhere along the road.  Anyway, the point of that probably ill-advised anecdote  is that as much as I think I shun company, I also want it, and need it.  And for a long time, my two former roommates have contributed significantly to that.  I could resort to technics to explain it, that the people you are surrounded with are a part of the mental tools as well, but why do that when I can make an emotionally uncomfortable statement instead: I'll miss them.  I miss them.  It's nice to have people around who accept you for who you are.  Not to say that my current roommates don't, or won't; I'm just trying to introduce them to the "who I am" part slowly.  It's like the early stages of dating; on the first date, you mention that you have a goldfish, and then after a few months, you reveal that when you say "you'll be sleeping with fishes," what you actually mean is--it's a Troy McClure reference.  Don't worry about it.  Yesterday, I left my first season of Battlestar Galactica out on the bookshelf; tomorrow, I'll add a few comic books.  And then, when it seems like they've grasped what they're in for, I'll leave a few videogame theory books lying around.

The gamebooks will stay in my room, I think.  Some things are just better left private.

Later Days.

...And You Can Take that to the Bank. Soon, please.

Once upon a time, my brothers and I all lived together in a house.  I'm not referring, in this case, to the house I grew up in, but the house nearby in the big city, which my parents purchased for us to live in while we went to university and learned stuff.  It was very nice of them.  Very, very nice.  Alas, two of the three brothers--myself included--moved out rather quickly, but the house and its remaining sibling occupant lived on.  And, as is more relevant to the current discussion, so did the mortgage for said house.  Now, given that my brothers and I were all to live in this house, it was deemed that the mortgage would be in all three of our names, as well as my parents.  We thought we should change this recently, to reflect, well, reality, and get my brother and my names off that mortgage.

This is a process much, much easier said than done.

Now, the basic way to do such a financial transaction is to come down to the bank and sign some papers.  That works great, in theory, but if you're a few thousand kilometers and multiple provinces away from said bank, that isn't going to work.  The original plan, then, as okayed by the bank, was that my parents would obtain my permission by phone, and attest to the fact that it was me speaking.  This was at the end of June.  A few weeks later, the bank decided that this was not, in fact, good enough.  While they trusted my parents enough to give them thousands of dollars, they were clearly not trustworthy enough to verify that they had their childrens' go-ahead.  So instead, I was to receive a scanned version of the contract, and sign it myself, then either scan it back or fax it back.  But again, the bank couldn't actually trust that something as ephemeral as a digital copy was real, so I had to mail a physical copy of the signed scan back to Saskatchewan. 

Now at this point, I really haven't done much besides roll my eyes as the bank bureaucracy from afar.  But now that I was entrusted with the signing of the scanned contract, I had a job to do.  And I kind of dropped the ball.  It took me weeks to get all this stuff together.  In my defense, it was more stuff than it may appear.  First, I had to print off the document.  Then I had to sign it.  Then I had to rescan it.  Then put it an envelope, affix a stamp, and send it back west.  The problem was that my home computer could scan, but not print.  The campus library computers could print but not scan.  And neither location had a ready supply of either stamps or envelops.  (Or, as I found out, pens for writing addresses).  So what followed were several days in which I'd remember to buy an envelop, but forget the stamp.  Or I'd be at home, and remember I needed to print something off.  Or I'd make the scan, then remember I'd forgotten to sign the paper. 

My favorite intermission was when I emailed my father a copy of my rescanned, signed version, and told him that I'd mail the copy when he confirmed that it looked okay.  Only it took him a week to do that (he was away on vacation, which is fair enough), and by then, I had, of course, misplaced the paper copy.  So I spent about an hour ransacking my room for that, then decided it wasn't going to be found.  But that meant I had to make a new copy altogether, since the other was dated (I suppose I could have reprinted the scan of the scan, but  I was worried the bank folk were looking for a pen-signature, and wouldn't accept something that was clearly printed off).  So I went to campus, printed off another copy, signed it then and there, bought a stamp and envelope, went home, and prepared to scan it before mailing it west--then found the original scanned signed copy still lying where I left it, face-down on my scanner.

Honestly, it amazes me that people my age have children.  I can barely keep track of a piece of paper for an hour at a time.

Later Days.

It was Between the Couch Cushions. Library couches are dangerous.

I've got a ten minute wait till the bus comes.  Let's see if I can do this in full.

Yesterday, I lost my cell phone, for the second time in as many weeks.  Last time, it had fallen out of my pocket, then disappeared behind a seat.  This time, it was a chair in a library.  There is a lesson here: my phone is so eager to get away from me that it's flinging itself into strange places.

This time was particularly irritating, though, because I didn't even notice it was missing until I got a Facebook message from a family member with Big News.  (It was good news, but it's not mine to share, so we'll remain vague.)  It wasn't the sort of news that you normally share over facebook, so I teased him/her about that, and got the message back that they DID try to contact me, but I never carry my stupid phone.

Oops.

Realizing it was missing, I went into a frenzy, searching the house, retracing my steps, even biking back to the university to continue the search there.  It was a bit of an overreaction, to be honest, but I was convinced that it was really important for me to get the phone back as soon as possible to contact said family member.  (Incidentally, the only reason I haven't yet is because I don't want to interrupt their day; if family member reads this, by any chance, let me know when a good time to call would be.)  And it was important for me to convey the effort I went to to find the phone as soon as possible.  I felt guilty.  I feel guilty.  Not just for losing the phone (if I felt guilty about losing things, I'd never get anything done.) but for not being there for the news.  The worst thing about moving out east is not being there for my family.  And sure, it's not like they needed me there, but... that doesn't make it any better, you know?  I missed out.  I feel about it, and even though I know I'll get over it... it's not a great feeling.

Ugh.

Later Days.

Being Erica: "In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity"

Everything that has a beginning has an ending. Make your peace with that and all will be well. --Buddha

 There's something I've been meaning to do for a while, but I kept putting it off, for one reason or another. Actually, that's not true: it was for a single reason, that I didn't want to the show to end. I'm talking about Being Erica, the CBC drama series that ran 49 episodes, from  January 5, 2009, to December 12, 2011. I finally watched the last episode last night, half a year after it originally aired, and I'm ready to talk about it. And I hope you're ready to talk about it too, because I'm about to open up the metaphorical scotch and pour it over the figurative grave in toast to time travelers in therapy everywhere.

Another Fine Moment

My life is a series of ridiculous and somewhat disgusting events.  Case in point:
 I went to the doctor today, to get a test performed.  The test required that I have a full bladder, so I was given very precise instructions: drink a litre of water of between 2 to 1 hours before the test, and don't drink anything for a full hour before the test.  Naturally, I forget to drink at all until it's 5 minutes before the 1 hour mark.  Desperate to make up for lost time, I guzzle the full litre in the time allowed.  How well did that plan work out? Poorly.  Hilarity and probable kidney damage soon ensue.  To make a long story short, it ends the way every trip to the doctor's does for me:

...And I could never look the nurse practitioner in the eye again.

Later Days.

I'm writing this blog post to tell you I'm not writing a blogpost

I realized a while back that my notes on games are lacking.  Oh, my notes on game studies are incredible--hundreds of pages of summaries, and comments, and points requiring further investigation.  And when I choose to investigate a game for a specific paper I have in mind, I'm excruciatingly thorough.  But when it comes to noting down what makes a game special when I'm playing it for the first time, I tend to fall a little short.  By the time I get back to the game, I have to replay it entirely, and that is a rather different sensation than when I play it for the first time.  So when I finished a game yesterday, I started jotting down a few notes on how I felt about it.  And kept jotting.  And jotting.  And jotting.  When I finished, I had been working for a full day, and I had 6000 words.  Someday, I will devote this level of concentration to my dissertation, and wrap the whole damn thing up in a month.

Normally, I'd put all of this out in one huge blog post, but this time... This time, I don't think I will.  You'll notice I haven't mentioned the name of the game, either.  While I'm sure anyone who's talked to me in recent weeks would be able to divine it pretty easily, the omission now is rather deliberate.  And it stems, in part, from me mentioning this game to others.  For once, my fellow academics were interested in a game not because of the novelty of my description (or rather, feigning interest in the "novelty" of my description) but because they thought there might be something there worth discussing.  That interest forced me to face some tough questions, and unpleasant realities about myself.  First, on the unpleasant part, I didn't want to share information on MY find.  (Never mind that I found through the effort of a popular videogame news site.)  Academia is full of good people, but it's also competitive.  I wouldn't want someone to publish my ideas without giving me proper credit; does the same apply to anything I'm working on?  Or anything I've played?  Like I said, I'm not proud of my response.  The people who were pressing me about this game are my friends.  And mostly doing research so far from my own that any conclusions they made about the game would be far, from my own as well.  But it got me thinking--I probably shouldn't be giving away my top tier ideas for free.  But if that's the case... then what's this blog for?

The off-the-cuff answer is that it's for the stuff that isn't about my work.  But I see myself as a pop culture scholar.  EVERYTHING is a potential work subject for me, so there's no line of demarcation there.  The other answer is that it's a place to work out ideas, which again, is fine.  But should I really be publishing half-baked ideas?  And it's a place for self-promotion--but that directly contradicts blog purposes 1 and 2.  Much as I try to make it something fun and interesting, the Bibliophile posts perform a service.  So do the academic book reviews.  In fact, so do the pop culture studies--the post on the Punisher still draws more hits than anything else on the blog.  But maybe it's time to think more in terms of the big picture, and what I want the blog to be--and what I want to be myself, for that matter.  And until I work that out, I think I'll keep this 6000 word rambling, at least, to myself.

Later Days.

Space paths untaken

A friend forwarded an opportunity to me, recently.  It's a writer's retreat out of an organization called Sage Hill.  Specifically, she thought I might be interested in their weeklong science fiction writing workshop, headed by sci-fi writer Spider Robinson.  And I was.  First, Sage Hill is a great organization, and their Writing Experience has been career-altering for a number of friends of mine.  (If you're interested in that sort of thing yourself, I'd recommend checking them out: http://www.sagehillwriting.ca/.) Second, to work with Spider Robinson would be amazing.  He's probably my favorite science fiction writer (Category: fictionalized novels and/or living) and I would absolutely love to have some one-on-one time with him.  Finally, writing is a passion of mine, as you've hopefully guessed by now--you don't reach 600+ blogposts doing something you don't want to do.  A chance to move professionally with writing is a dream of mine, one that I've put away for the slightly (very slightly) more practical dream of the related passion of scholarship.  It's not just an opportunity; it's a huge opportunity.

I decided not to apply.

Click here to suggest this post to Friends

About a week ago, I went on Facebook to post a video on a friend's page (in fact, the very video I used for Friday Quotations last week) only to find that she was no longer on my friend's list. Facebook, as many of you I'm sure know and have perhaps experienced, does not actually tell you when someone else blocks you. It's probably a measure added to keep dropped people from immediately lashing out, and it's probably a good idea; to paraphrase, Hell hath no fury like the Facebook user scorned. In this particular instance, I'm reasonably sure the lady in question has dropped Facebook entirely. And I can understand that. Facebook is hardly a private enclosure, and its chief interests are not exactly its users' best interests. If someone wants to forge ahead without it, power to them.

What caught me a little off guard in this case, though, was the realization that her foreclosure was effectively the end of our friendship. I don't know her phone number, her address, or her email address. We had one connection, and that was done. It was a parting of ways without a goodbye, and in this day and age, a permanent parting, without even a hint of the "maybe talk sometime" seems like something rare. I don't want to overstate the terms of our friendship; she was a person I knew kind of distantly, and we both updated facebook statuses rather regularly, so we exchanged snipes once every two or three weeks. That was it. But then again, that describes about three quarters of my friends on Facebook--and frankly, that frequency rate is probably much lower than most.

Glaring childhood trauma is what's behind about 90% or so of adult insecurities, and that's certainly the case here. I don't talk about it a lot explicitly, but longtime readers with a gift for reading between the lines won't be surprised to know that I didn't have a lot of friends growing up. I had a few, and I'm still grateful for them, and I don't like to get all melodramatic about the time period, because things got better, to put it simply, but in general, there were some unpleasant stretches. I was small, bookish, and kind of a snarky snob. (In fact, given that I was small, bookish, and kind of a snarky snob, it's something of an accomplishment that I didn't have enemies. And that I made it all the way through high school without getting beaten up. Let's look at the bright side, yeah?) At any rate, that background has made me a little more sensitive towards friendships in general, and given me an appreciation of how fragile they are. Generally speaking, a friendship doesn't fall apart from a big fight or major melodrama, but from disinterest and neglect.

And social media, in a lot of ways, makes things worse. I can't speak for how instant messaging affects matters, since my phone is stuck in the metaphoric stone age, but I think the general experience still holds. In almost all cases, making it easier to contact someone doesn't make contact more frequent. A lot of the time, it has the opposite effect; if it's so easy, if it can be done at any time, why not put it off just a little longer? I recently went nearly a month without phoning my parents, and for the last two weeks of that, I said to myself almost every night, "Well, it's too late to call them today, but I'll definitely call them later." I understand that MMO companies' biggest money-makers are those who sign up for automatic payment, then stop playing without signing out. It's the same principle: you will never go broke betting on the human ability to procrastinate. In life and in Warcraft, procrastination has its price.

The argument could be made that any unfriending resulting from lack of Facebook contact (or similar drifting) is a case of cutting wheat from the chaff; if X was so important to you, you never would have lost contact with X to begin with. And all right, there's some truth to that. At the same time, my favorite 17th century peep, John Donne, famously said, "Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind." I think you can invert that: "I am involved in mankind, and any diminishment in my involvement is a tiny death." Don't keep toxic people around you, by all means, but don't let good people slip away. (And, um, don't be a stalker, but that's a different set of social disorders.)

I don't know if there's a particular conclusion to draw from this set of ramblings. I suppose I could take from it that I should spend more effort getting to know my friends. Granted, that tactic runs the risk of making them annoyed and exasperated. But hey, at least they won't be disinterested.

Later Days.

Lather, Rinse, and Repeat.

I am not a man bound by the petty restrictions of normative gender behavior. I believe I can remain proud and certain of my masculinity, while at the same time enjoying my episodes of Gossip Girl and MLP. And so, I didn't see anything odd when I selected my current shampoo, Herbal Essence's Drama Clean. It's got a catchy name, it's cheap (a big consideration, since I am also cheap), and it removes the grease from my hair. That's what I look for in a shampoo. Any gendered implications were irrelevant. My roommates, however, saw things differently. They were horrified, not just that I bought it but that "I didn't even try to hide it." I scoffed at them. Literally, scoffed. Scoffing isn't as easy as it sounds; if you do it wrong, it comes off as a sneer that coincides with an ill-timed burp. No, I said, you are mistaken. It is just a shampoo with a mildly amusing name.

And then, today, I read the label. Among the list of polycarbosaturates and straight-chain alkyl benzene sulfonates, there was some advice. If I am feeling blah about my outfit, my shampoo bottle told me, I should consider taking a pair of flats and slacks and adding a sequined top. A sequined top. The last time I wore a sequined top, I was playing an elf in a school pageant. It seems that my shampoo agreed with my roommates: it was not for me. (Or alternatively, I should buy some sequined tops. While I will keep the option open, I don't think I'll be exercising it any time soon.)

In the past, I've audited a course on cosmetics and aesthetics. So I know that, for beauty products in general, and hair care in particular, there is very little difference, chemically speaking, between one product and the next. What distinguishes one shampoo from the next is almost entirely the style it attempts to exhibit. (Not fully true; there are shampoos that target certain lengths of hair. But work with me.) Does it claim that it offers an "organic experience?" Is it for "party girls"? Is it part of the groomed man's repertoire? I look at the taglines, and I despair. Wouldn't it be nice to live in a world where people didn't care about the connotations of their hair detergent? Where they could choose shampoos freely without having to buy into a corporate image of identity? Where they could buy a shampoo just based on the fact that it cleans your hair?

On the other hand, I bought a shampoo largely based on the pun in its title, so clearly I have no idea what I'm talking about.

Later Days.

Thoughts Not Fully Formed

I thought I'd go for a run this morning, but I slipped three times going down the driveway, and thought that it was a bad idea. Icy sidewalks are the worst.

I don't understand cauliflower. I don't mean I don't like it--I mean I can't comprehend what possible culinary use it could serve, what flavors it could complement. At least broccoli has some color to it.

Every time I do a full cleaning of my room, my allergies immediately get much worse. It's like my lungs are mocking me in my attempts to live a more dust-free environment.

The nightstand that props up the lamp in my room is actually a pile of my largest, thickest books. I go back and forth between thinking that this is very stupid and that it's kind of cool.

I'm pretty sure that I don't know how to use an iron. That there is some basic principle in the process that I am not comprehending and that lack is dragging down the whole operation.

I know people who can't seem to go any length of time without a significant other or without being in a group of friends. And it always seemed a little sad to me, like they don't know who they are unless there's someone around to reaffirm it.

And at the same time, I know my own preferences in that regard make the statement a little hypocritical: I feel smothered if I don't get regular doses of alone time, but I'm always terrified that my friends are waiting patiently until I leave to really get a party started. (Actually, that's rather different problem than needing to be around people, isn't it?)

In the same sort of "I'm cheap" vein as the nightstand, my full length mirror was one I found by the side of the road at midnight, then carried over 3k to get it home. ...But this one, I just think is cool.

For most of the winter months, I go everywhere wearing two pairs of socks. I don't know if this is because my shoes are poorly insulated, or because my nervous system is a bizarre system cobbled together by monkeys, but it seems to do the trick.

I like My Little Pony. And Gossip Girl. And well done romantic comedies. And cocktails with strange drinks and stranger names. And it really annoys me to be mocked (all right, gently mocked) as "unmanly" for it by colleagues, because what the hell's the point of being able to deconstruct gender normativity in papers if you're unwilling to apply it in your everyday life?

And yes, I do realize that there's some intellectual elitism in the above statement, of the "humanities scholars should know better" variety. Fine. I think *everyone* should loosen up in terms of gender identity, okay? And maybe then I could drink my screaming orgasm in peace. ...Don't give me that look.

I'm worried this combo of "insightful thoughts/fluffy nonsense" isn't going well. Time to end this.

Later Days.

Weighing the "Con"s of a Conundrum

While I was constructing the post below, I was working in a public space. And when I was about half way through the post, I realized I could hear the voice of someone I recognized. But that was all I could do. I couldn't make out the words. I couldn't even trace the voice to where it was coming from, and make a visual confirmation. All I could do was think, "yep, that's him/her all right. I'd recognize his/her tone anywhere, and that is most definitely the distinct warbling of him/her."

The thing was, having reached that conclusion, I was at a loss on the proper course of action. Normally, if I run into a friend or see a friend (and I do count him/her as a friend), I would greet them. But this wasn't quite a full running, and there was no seeing at all. And since I couldn't see him/her, I'd have to walk towards the voice to do said greeting. That had two selfish points against it: first, my laptop was set up, so I couldn't just walk over--to ensure the safety of my too-expensive machine, I'd have to pack it up and bring it with me, which meant the slight time commitment of putting everything away. Further, I was in the middle of a blog post. I didn't really want to lose my train of thought.

The other side of the issue played on my ever-present insecurities. Would this person *want* to be greeted by me in this place? It was a public space, but not one I tend to spend a lot of time with, so he/she wouldn't be expecting to see me there. If I was hearing his/her voice frequently, that implied that he/she was there with someone else. Would an interruption be welcome? What if I greeted them, and their first unguarded response was hostility? I could deliberately make my presence known first, and pretend not to acknowledge them, to offer a chance to realize I was there, but what if in that case they feigned to ignore me as I was ignoring them? What if our entire friendship was built on a precarious house of cards and my unexpected appearance was the gust of wind that causes the whole iffy assemblage to come tumbling down into a heap of lies and deceit? (The fact that I was writing a post on conspiracy theory was probably creeping into my thoughts here.)

Luckily, the problem was abrogated when he/she left (or stopped talking) before I finished the post. Once again, indecision inadvertently rescues the day. That was a close one.

(Extra game: Regular readers in the area! Try and figure out the identity of the mystery person! Could he/she be YOU?)

Later Days.