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Sunday, May 13th, 2012
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11:59 am - Week 26: Sated
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I want to be sated. I want to be filled up with love, and joy, and comfort, and peace. I want to forget what it was ever like to not feel these things, to forget what it's like to feel their opposites: anger, and misery, and tension, and this constant, pervasive gloom.
I've come close to thinking that state of peace doesn't really exist, for anyone. That those who claim they have it are merely liars, deluding themselves as much as anyone else into thinking they have achieved peace and bliss. They haven't, not really--they only tell themselves that out of fear, fear of the same endless despair I feel right now. They are terrified of this feeling, as well they should be, and so they lie and paint false smiles on their faces to protect themselves from the unbearable truth: that they are alone, as we all are, and will never be anything else.
They could never be as happy as they claim. It isn't possible. It isn't possible for me to believe that they truly feel what they say they feel, not when I see such misery blotting out the landscape to the horizon, no matter what direction I turn my eyes--there is no room for joy in this land, no place where it might touch down and not be consumed by evil and pain, like ants swarming over a dead carcass. This earth I stand on has been forever tainted by that same poison that courses through my veins, and will never be fertile again.
And yet I know this all must be untrue.
I know because I can recall being so happy: once, a long time ago, even as recently as a week ago. A time when peace and comfort were my friends. Then it did not seem a dream; then I could stand, and breathe easily, and recall how it felt to be here, in the land I stand now. Because I have felt this way before; I have been consumed with this same sorrow and frantic, mindless terror, and have found my way to a green glen, where I could sit in shaded brooks and let my heart rest. Such things were true before; they must be true now.
I wonder how I got here, to hell, from that peaceful heaven. More crucially, I wonder how I can get back, what path I followed before, and if it could still be there.
Depression really fucks me up; once I think I'm out of its maw, it comes back and bites me again. And again. And then again.
I wouldn't wish this damned thing on anyone.
current mood:  depressed
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(comment on this)
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| Sunday, May 6th, 2012
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11:24 pm - In space, no one can hear you flush
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Day 487
It isn't easy being on a spaceship with two million people.
It's even harder when nobody thought to install a toilet anywhere on the damned thing.
Our ancestors had a dream: that we would never again be a single-planet species. For to live on but one stone would make us vulnerable and weak, too easily snuffed by a lone asteroid, an ill-timed solar flare, or one of the myriad other cruel vagaries of cosmic chance. But to be spread across many worlds, our living seed scattered like dandelions upon the stellar wind, taking root on two, on a dozen, on hundreds of other worlds...ahh, that would be but the merest reach from immortality, and our survival would be assured.
And they built a monument to that dream, a vast space ark, as large as the moon, pieced together in orbit, on which an entire civilization would survive passage through the endless night to new worlds. For centuries have we been on this vessel, and it has served us well. But time is no friend to memory: except in the ancient books, we no longer remember those who assembled this craft; they are forgotten.
Which is just as well, because if I ever met one of them, I'd wring his scrawny neck while screaming questions about where the f@*# he learned about plumbing, not to mention asking how the hell HIS anatomy worked. Because it sure couldn't have been much like mine.
It was weird--I never even thought about using a toilet the whole time I was a kid. Nobody did; it was just a fact of life on the ship. Nobody ever had to go to the bathroom--that part of our lives just didn't exist. And I grew up, raised in my stimulus pod tended by my designated parental units. I attended mental programming courses every day, I took my nutrient pills, I was conditioned to become a fully functioning biological unit of the vessel, right on schedule. And no one once brought up the issue of bodily waste. It was never a concern.
And then there was that day. I had taken my nutrition pill. And I realized I had to go. Like, now. And that's when I discovered...there was no place TO go.
I tried to explain my predicament to my sector operator. It did not go well.
"Look! I have to...GO!"
"Go? Go where? You can go anywhere on the ship. Provided your access badge allows it, of course."
"No, I mean...I have to go. To the bathroom!"
"Well, of course your access badge permits you to go to the the bath units. You are expected to cleanse yourself at least once every two day-cycles after all."
"Yeah, but...I have to...let it out..."
"Yes, you let it out in the form of work. For the good of the entire ship, your contribution to the grand cause."
"I mean let out what's inside of me!"
"Ohh...now I understand." He looked nervous and began to whisper. "Now, I can arrange a session with one of our psychounits, but, naturally, it WILL be recorded as part of your ongoing profile..."
It was hopeless. There was nothing to do but find another place. A place to GO.
So I left the assigned occupancy grid, breaking, for the first time in my life, with my intended routine. At first I tried to find someplace in the nominally habitable areas, but there was nothing: no place to relieve myself. So I disappeared into the tunnels linking the designated habitable areas together. I discovered that our controllers had lied to us: we COULD live outside the habitable zones. It was cold, smelly, and unpleasant there. But survivable. And after hours of searching I found a place to go. Not a toilet; just a private place. A place where I felt comfortable going.
Once done, I left it behind. I had no idea the stink would be so bad.
But once out, I discovered I could not return. I was now an outcast; I no longer had a place in society.
So I continued to live in the so-called uninhabitable zones, living off of garbage, sleeping in dark places. And after a while, I discovered there were others--people who, like me, had left because they needed to go.
We live out here, together but alone, forgotten by our society. Bound together by our bodily functions.
This started out as a joke on how, on so many sci-fi shows, there is no explanation of how the most, er, basic of human functions is attended to. Then it went rather wrong...
current mood:  amused
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(comment on this)
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| Saturday, April 14th, 2012
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9:44 pm - LJ Idol Week 22: The Bridge
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That. Was. Not. Her. Brother.
Verbena felt the fur raise on her back. Felt the muscle of each claw tighten. Felt her own tail swish back and forth, angry and unsettled.
Crouched under the dining room table, she watched with intense interest as the foodgiver opened the door to the carrier. A strange beast emerged: feline, perhaps, but shaved to the bare skin, nothing but a ridiculous halo of fur around its head that now looked twice as large as its body.
Four hours earlier, the foodgiver had scooped up her brother Cosmos, with his long, grey, matted hair, and crammed him, mewing piteously, into the same carrier, and carted him out of their home. And then the foodgiver had returned with the carrier, and opened the door.
And this THING had come out.
It eyed its surroundings warily, as if it had never expected to come home. It slunk, head low, as if afraid it would be put back into the box. And then, once convinced it would not be, it began to bound around, free, happy to be safe again.
It approached Verbena. She began a low growl, warning off this shaved and shampooed thing that could not possibly be her brother, and it hesitated, confused.
Lowering its head in deference, it walked up slowly, so that she had to swat at the stranger with an angry paw, and hiss, and then run off in terror, as the foodgiver yelled at her. "Hey! Stop picking on your brother! He just had a grooming, that's all!"
The next day the foodgiver left them alone all day, as he did every day. And he followed her around; he mewed queryingly, as if he actually expected to be accepted again. He now moved with great care around her, watching her as if in fear for his life.
This was wise. Verbena never took her eyes off him when he was in sight. You never knew what the Thing might do.
But this grew tiresome. She needed rest.
So she retired to the bridge, the huge carpeted climbing toy the foodgiver had erected in a fit of love for his pets. Her brother had always been afraid to climb to the top of the bridge; perhaps the Thing would be, too.
It was a warm day, and sun fell most pleasingly on the top of the bridge at this time of day. Cats have little power against Morpheus under such circumstances. Soon her eyes were shut tight.
It must have been an especially deep sleep, for he did not hear him approach, did not know he was there until he felt him nuzzling her side, licking her neck. He did not have his collar, and the jingling tags had not warned her of his approach.
Her first reaction was to hiss. She was trapped; she could not get away without jumping six feet to the ground. But then she caught a whiff of the smell as he groomed her face.
Her brother's smell might be washed away, but his mouth was always his own.
She began to purr as she let him groom her, content once again.
current mood:  lethargic
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| Monday, April 9th, 2012
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2:10 pm - Yes, sometimes I'm almost as mature as a thirteen year old boy...
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| Thursday, April 5th, 2012
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10:05 pm - Week 21: LJ Idol--The straw that stirs the drink
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The straw that stirs the drink,
turned by the finger that turns the straw,
on the hand that holds the finger,
on the arm that carries the hand.
The man who stops to think,
and allows his thoughts to linger,
as he listens to the band,
and his feelings do withdraw.
He knows there is a link,
between the falling grains of sand,
and the feeling that does gnaw,
and the bright words of the singer.
The bar is hot and full of stink,
and bitter is his pint of lager
but his insides do not thaw
and his heart does not demand
T'was tonight, things came to the brink,
and they fought tooth and claw,
and though his anger was unplanned
with words did he so flog her
Now he can only blink,
in this newly frozen land,
and consider what doth auger
from their friendship's fatal flaw.
And the man who drinks the drink,
would spin gold from straw
and weave it around his finger
to regain love lost by his hand.
(Sorry I'm late with this!)
current mood:  productive
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(comment on this)
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| Monday, March 26th, 2012
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11:06 pm - Week 20 (Open topic)--The Punk Rock Moment
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I call it the punk rock moment.
What is the punk rock moment? Well you should ask.
I was...let's see, I must have been twenty, maybe twenty-one at most. Barely legal. I was still living at home. I had a bedroom upstairs, and I often slept there. But I also had a listening center in the basement: my parents old king size bed (moved there when they replaced it with twins, which proved providential when my father moved one into the spare bedroom with him), a raft of records, cassettes and CDs (there were no iPods back then), and the various doodads required to play them, along with a big honking pair of headphones from Radio Shack, to compensate for my shitty little speakers. Sometimes I played music so loud they could hear it through the whole house. Sometimes I fell asleep with the headphones on. That was when I didn't sleep upstairs.
I was a budding rock snob: someone who treasures ownership of obscure records and knowledge of obscure bands; who reads books by other rock snobs to figure out the next thing I'm gonna listen to. I read the Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll until I had parts memorized, I checked out books from the public library written by the authors of articles in that history, and then I visited out-of-the-way little hippie hovel record stores and trolled the bins at Best Buy for CDs to find the sounds those authors were talking about. Partly because I loved new sounds, or old sounds that were new to me; but also because I loved knowing about things most people didn't. It was a kind of power, however trivial it was.
None of that prepared me for the Sex Pistols.
I had read about them, to be sure. Indeed, it was Greil Marcus' entry on them in the History that first made me want to hear them. In it, he described a music that upended a society in stasis. As he explained it, Britain in the late 1970's--and to some degree the United States, too--were in a sort of existential crisis: disappointed by the failed dreams of the previous decade, facing staggering unemployment and a sinking economy, a band had dared to make a music that refused to accept the world presented to them, that thumbed its nose at any pretense of authority. And paid the price: they were hassled by the police, chased down the street by random strangers brandishing knives; their records were not officially acknowledged as popular by the powers that be.
Marcus wrote of the Sex Pistols' records as being 'a protest against life.' I HAD to hear this. But I was somehow scared; it took me months to work up the nerve to buy their album. Finally I did, and I brought it home, and I listened for the first time to these sounds I had read of for so long. And listened again. And another time. And it made no difference: the sound I was expecting wasn't there.
I was disappointed. I had already 'discovered' punk, I thought. I loved The Clash, the other Great British Punk Band, had been playing their music for months. But Never Mind The Bollocks didn't connect with me. I couldn't understand why. Still, I kept listening off and on for the next several months. Something about it intrigued me--I just couldn't figure out what.
Meanwhile, living at home was no fun. Mom had gone back to live with her parents for a few months, leaving my father and myself to get along as best we could. The 'best' we could manage was to have a lot of stupid arguments that didn't go anywhere. I had reached the age of majority, but I wasn't thrilled with the idea. It opened up new privileges to be sure, but it also meant I had to accept a lot of responsibility I didn't feel ready for. In truth, I was scared--scared of failing at being a grown adult. At the same time, I felt enormous pressure from dad to do what he wanted, and I fought him every inch of the way; to give in to him felt like a surrender of my own autonomy, of my ability to determine a course for myself. Thus we had arguments over things like whether I should apply for a credit card: he felt it was time to for me to start building a credit history; with no income to speak of, I didn't want to have the responsibility of it.
It was after one more such argument that I stomped downstairs to the basement and played more music--always my way of dealing with frustration. Out of boredom, perhaps, I put on Bollocks again, flipping through tracks, trying to find something to express my mood, never expecting to.
But this time, things went differently. It was in the opening chords of "Pretty Vacant" that I felt something snap: I felt a sudden anger, white hot and raging, stronger than any anger I'd known before; and yet I also felt powerful. Empowered. In control of myself in a way I never had felt before. It wasn't the admission of helplessness that so often accompanies anger; this was different. It was almost a kind of joy.
There's no point in asking: you'll get no reply
I scrambled through my other records, touchstones of rage I had always relied on in these moments, trying to find something else like this. None of them had it: not the Stones, not the Who, not the Clash, not even the gorram Monkees' "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone". I went back to the Pistols, and it was still there. I was astonished.
Something happened to me that night, something much more than my simply having a rage party while playing some music. I had a revelation: I was the one in control of my life. No one else was. No one else could be. Any choice I made, no matter who wanted me to make it, no matter how much pressure they applied, was ultimately my own choice to make. What came of it didn't matter--only that the choice would always be my own.
Or even more than that: in that music, I heard a way of saying “Hey, Universe: I EXIST, damn it. I’m ME. I’m capable of being proud of myself. And there’s nothing anyone in you can do to change that.”
I knew the legend of the Sex Pistols, but I finally understood that all the stuff I’d read was just lines in a history book. What mattered was that at a particular moment in history, a particular person had chosen to stand up and say what he believed was true, in spite of entire nation that wanted him to just shut up...and he’d survived it. To say that Johnny Rotten sang 'a protest against life' didn't mean that he wanted to die; it meant that he refused to accept life as an interchangeable cog in the grand machine of modern society. And I could refuse, too.
That realization was what I call the punk rock moment.
I made a promise to myself that night that I would only do things I agreed with. And while I sometimes--often--failed to live up to that promise, I have never forgotten it.
current mood:  hyper
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(1 comment | comment on this)
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| Tuesday, March 20th, 2012
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5:58 pm - Week 19 LJ Idol: Bye
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Taking a 'bye' this week on the topic "Et tu, Brutus?" (I know I got voted off last week, but I want to play the home game anyway). I will be back next week...
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(comment on this)
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| Monday, March 12th, 2012
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7:16 pm - Lj Idol Week 18: Connection
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While stumbling around looking for a spark of inspiration for this week's entry, I found this (http://tigrkittn.livejournal.com/189512.html) from ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92) tigrkittn:
I meant to spend the afternoon writing my Idol entry, or at least figuring out what it's going to be - but got distracted wandering around OK Cupid for the past hour and a half instead. I wasn't even doing anything useful - just browsing profiles and questions...
I could immediately identify with the sense of wasting time, of finding myself procrastinating when there are things to do. But my immediate reaction to her entry was very different. My first thought was: Wow. I don't think I could spend an hour and a half on a dating site if my life depended on it.
I have been doing the relationship-looking thing lately, setting up an account on Match.com, uploading pictures, viewing profiles, and so on. I am dutiful about the work. But I know there is something off balance with me when I realize that's how I subconsciously regard it: as work. As a chore. As if finding a friend, a lover, perhaps a partner was a nuisance, another thing on my bucket list of daily tasks along with doing the dishes and making sure the rent is paid.
The idea of spending time looking at profiles on a dating site freaks me out. Partly it's the mechanical nature of it; I feel as if I'm sizing people up as if they were livestock. But there is a deeper discomfort in it: doing the dating site thing means that sooner or later I will have to actually reach out to someone--to risk contact. And not only to risk contact, but to steer the ship of my dreams of contact onto the rough seas of reality.
As I wrote a few weeks ago, I grew up moving from place to place several times. I did not mention that I did this without brothers or sisters. My family was a tightly contained unit: it was my father, my mother, and me, always blowing on the next summer breeze, alighting for a season on the soil before being blown away again.
I developed an extreme sense of self-sufficiency from that experience. Forming bonds with people was risky, dangerous; chances were they would be torn away again. And yet I also had a deep desire for contact with someone. It's a dichotomy: an intense loneliness contained within an iron will to restrict contact.
It would be easy for me to keep describing my dating woes. They’re real enough. But my tendency towards isolation impacts me in other ways as well. I have several friends--not tons, but several, yet I don’t spend a lot of time with them. I write to beloved family members rarely, see them even less often. And when people call my out of the blue, I often don’t make them feel welcome--I feel annoyed at the unexpected intrusion, and feel certain they can hear the tension in my voice as I try to be pleasant.
And then there’s this week's spark. The LJ Idol topic for this week shows how my hesitancy to engage contact affects me in another way as well: I have been a contributor to LJ Idol...but not a full participant. I haven't hung out in the Green Room; I have only rarely commented on other people's works; and haven't properly thanked everyone all the people who have been supportive of my writing. I can offer reasons why, such as working against a major deadline at work, and those reasons aren't untrue. But at bottom, I see that my own fierce independence has kept me apart.
So I'd like to take this chance to thank everyone who has taken the time to read what I've written: ![[info]](http://l-files.livejournal.net/userhead/248?v=1321199815) basric, lawchicky, notodette, beldarzfixon, whipchick, karmasoup, vaudy (who’s to blame for my even being in this thing), I'm sure I've forgotten others. I've read your entries, and they are wonderful; I've read every comment you made on my contributions, and they have warmed my heart. Thank you all.
I promise to keep writing.
current mood:  pensive
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(22 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, March 5th, 2012
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7:47 pm - LJ Idol, Week 17: Bringing a Knife to a Gun Fight
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Low cut dresses are not made for eating pasta.
Mary looked at herself in the restroom mirror, her face feeling hot. Before going on this date, she had read up on all the dating tips she could find, including a book her mother had packed in with her underwear before leaving home. 101 Ways to Have a Great Date it was called, and after overcoming her mortification that her own mother thought she needed such a book, Mary scoured it for useful tips. There weren't any, just flowery speeches about making the most of things, learning from your mistakes, and how enjoying yourself will make you attractive to your date.
Not a single tip told her what to do when you spill the shrimp from your fettuccine alfredo off your fork and it zeroes in unerringly on your exposed cleavage. And then slides down inside where you can't get at it without making a scene. The only thing that seemed remotely applicable was "learn from your mistakes"; she supposed the mistake here was to not first check what restaurant your date is taking you to when you are a legendarily clumsy eater.
It wasn't supposed to go this way, she sighed.
( Click for more... )
current mood:  working
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(11 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, February 27th, 2012
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6:51 pm - Week 16: Inventing the Wheel, yet again
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"Everyone, pay attention. Today we're going to say 'Hello' to a young boy who is joining our class. He's new here this year, and we want to make him feel welcome..."
The teacher speaks a bit more, telling the class my name, where I'm from, and how she expects everyone to treat me well. Then she beckons me forward; I get up, walk to the front of the class, two dozen pairs of fifth-grade eyes upon me. Watching me like an unknown performer on a stage, or an exotic animal at a zoo. What will he be like? they are all thinking. Will he be one of us?
That's how it feels to me, anyway.
It's a strange experience to move to a new school every two years. It is not by my choice. My father works in an industry where the work is tied to geography; he has to relocate us every so often to follow the jobs. So we sell our house, pack up our belongings, travel for days, and move into a new house in a new neighborhood in a new state, and I go to a new school.
In essence, an entire chunk of my social life is rebooted every two years. I get a different teacher, a different school building, different classmates, different neighbors. This has happened twice so far, and will happen twice more before I enter high school. The software of my life is wiped clean and upgraded to a revised version: more expensive house, newer neighborhood, a better class of neighbors...whom I don’t know.
They say that whenever you upgrade a piece of software, you're simply exchanging an old collection of bugs for a new one. You're taking a system, however flawed, that you understand and have experience in using, and swapping it out for something completely unknown and untried.
So it is with my starting in a new school. Once again, I have to learn the codes and rules for this particular group of people, who we respect, who we laugh at, who makes us laugh, who we can trust, who we cannot. Every gathering has such rules; I have had many chances to see this now.
They are not easy rules to learn. I struggle to master them, and sometimes I fail. At my last school, I had to spend my lunch hour sitting in the cafeteria parked on the folding tables between the two boys who most loved to tease me, tease me until I wanted to cry, until I could barely eat my lunch. In exasperation, I told them how happy I was that I was leaving at the end of the year: I'd never have to see them again.
Now I'm here. It's time to learn everything all over again.
Every school is different. I can tell a lot from how the school is constructed. Brick? Wood? Old? New? Is it all indoors, or do they have separate buildings that you have to go between? Are some of the classes in temporary buildings? This usually means the school is in an expanding area, and the teachers are harried, trying to keep up. All of the kids may be relatively new, and not know each other.
What kind of playground is there? Are the climbing toys made of wood or metal or concrete? I'll have to learn what toys to play on and which ones to avoid--the ones that aren't any fun, the ones that spiders like to form webs on, provoking bites, and the ones that belong to the mean kids, who will beat up anyone who plays on 'their' jungle gym.
What kind of desks do they have in the classrooms? Are they the one piece affairs with an attached writing surface? Or the separate desks with a little cubbyhole? Will I be able to leave my books in the desk? Will the other kids leave it alone if I do?
What will the teacher be like? Funny? Mean? Tired? Will she put names on the board? Add checks after it each time I do something she doesn't like? How many checks can she add before I'll get in real trouble? She may lay out the discipline plan, but I know there will be subtle details: how often she follows through on punishment, how riled up she'll get before she snaps, how to know when she's just blowing smoke and when she's really angry.
What will the cafeteria be like? Do all eat together, or can we choose our own table? Which things are actually edible from the kitchen, and which things are gross and slimy? I've had enough institutional food to know it's only the same up to a point.
What will the bathrooms be like? Will the library have any decent books? Will the music class be worth the time? Or the art class? Will the gym teacher be a total dick to me? I need to know these things!
Most of all, where am I going to fit in with THIS group of kids? Will I be picked on? Will I find somebody who likes me? Will anybody hit me? Hurt me? Single me out for torment? Or will I finally fit in this time?
The teacher has stopped talking. She has to give me a little nudge before I realize I'm supposed to say something. A few other kids smother a giggle.
"H-hello. This is my first day, and my name is..."
current mood:  melancholy
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(7 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, February 20th, 2012
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7:32 pm - Week 15: Preoccupied (LJ Idol)
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The first version of the MSX home computer used the General Instrument AY-3-8910 chip as its primary method of sound generation.
"What is an ‘MSX’?" you may ask.
Answer: it was a standard for 8 bit home computers introduced in 1983 jointly by Microsoft and ASCII Corporation for electronics manufacturers to follow. It never caught on in the United States; the Japanese manufacturers who embraced the MSX standard did not believe they could compete with the wealth of home computers already glutting the U.S. market (the Commodore 64, the Apple II, the TRS-80 Color Computer, etc.) and for the most part never tried to export the machine. But the MSX did very well in Japan and other countries. In Japan it was the most popular system for playing video games until it was eclipsed by Nintendo's Famicom (which was eventually exported to the U.S. as the Nintendo Entertainment System).
What's interesting here is not the neat bundle of facts I just presented. What's interesting is that I'm reciting all of that from memory (well, almost all--I had to double check the year of release).
At work, I have the nickname 'The Robopedia'--a portmanteau of 'Wikipedia' and my first name. Like a living incarnation of Cliff Clavin--or Sheldon Cooper, if you prefer a more contemporary sitcom reference--I'm a walking treasure trove of useless facts and information, and will inject them into the conversation on the flimsiest pretext. "You got a can of Coke for lunch? You know, Coca-Cola hasn't changed their logo once since introducing it in..."
I am fortunate that my friends and coworkers are tolerant of my behavior--even amused. Lord knows, I find Cliffie and Sheldon annoying, too.
It's frustrating. I can't even predict what information will stick. I know the compete register set of the Nintendo Game Boy; can list every song on every album and single by the Beatles, in order, on both their British and American discographies (yes, they're different); can describe, year by year, factory changes in the Chevrolet Corvette; and can quote a whole passel of song lyrics I can track down to the artist, song, and album in about five seconds. I never intended to memorize these bits of trivia; they just took up residence in my grey matter, uninvited.
And yet I have trouble remembering names of people I've met several times. I forget birthdays and anniversaries of family members. And I couldn't tell you the complete address of the building I work in every day.
If I had been born ten years later, I suspect I would have been diagnosed with ADHD and given Ritalin. Even as a kid, I was easily distracted and tended to get lost in my own world. As an adult, I handle it well enough without medication, well enough that I don't want to start managing it chemically if I don't have to. Their actions are inexact, and their side effects are sometimes unpleasant, and I feel better struggling, and succeeding, without the outside support.
That, I think, is why I’m like this. Accumulating this store of largely useless trivia is one of my coping mechanisms. At times of high anxiety or nervousness, when I feel disorganized and out of control, I review these orderly lists of information that catch my interest, until I can recite them in my head, almost as a litany. I reorganize and reconsider them, looking for new patterns to emerge. They become like old friends, a calming melody in a dissonant storm of mental noise.
Sometimes, people look at me as I stare at nothing, my lips moving faintly to words they cannot hear. They don't know the mental waves I'm riding. Surfing on an ocean of information, trying to keep my balance, bracing for the next neural wave.
current mood: hyper
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(6 comments | comment on this)
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| Saturday, February 18th, 2012
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12:19 am - LOLz
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| Monday, February 13th, 2012
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7:32 pm - More Modest Mary: Twitterpated (LJ Idol Week 14)
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Click here for the previous episode...
@ChessnutMare
I'M CONSTIPATED BY LOVE
35 minutes ago
@aprilMae
LOL you should get Cupid's Immodium for that
22 minutes ago
@cPlusParker
*I'M* CONSTIPATED BY CHEESE!!
16 minutes ago
Mary heard her phone make the little 'ping' sound, and cringed a little. She looked at the screen:
@FuzzLeaf
I'm sure it'll all come out okay...IN THE END!!!
1 minute ago
Disgusted, she flipped the phone over, and shrunk back into a little ball on the couch. It was 1 AM, Andie was out breaking curfew again, and she had taken refuge in a movie on cable as a balm to her humiliated spirit.
Consternated. THAT was what she'd meant to type, but auto-correct had ideas of its own. And now her agony was in front of the entire Internet.
It had been a week since that dumb party, and Mary could replay the whole scene in her head like it was an hour ago. Andie had dragged her over to 'introduce' her to Shaun--Mary pulling back every step of the way--except Andie's idea of an introduction was to physically shove Mary into Shaun from behind, practically knocking him over, and scream at them:
"Hey, Shaun, she's really into you, do something about it, will ya?"
And then melt into the crowd to look for someone to dance with. (Later that evening, when she got back to her room, Mary would glare at her--she was so angry she couldn't bring herself to speak--and Andie would give a big smile and say, "You're welcome.")
In the fracas, Shaun had spilled his drink over the both of them. And that had somehow led to conversation, awkward and uncomfortable at first, but real. It turned out Shaun was in the engineering school, and took a lot of classes in the Pembrook Hall, where she had most of her lectures.
And from there they had somehow ended up on the dance floor together.
This had never happened to her before. It felt good. It felt almost magical. She was certain she'd see him again, that he would call the next night. When he did so, she was delighted. And again a couple nights later. It was just a matter of time, she thought, until he asked her out.
He hadn't yet asked. And he hadn't called for a couple nights. And today, Mary found herself standing in the hallway outside his classroom, wondering if he'd talk to her. Only she wasn't sure if she wanted to find out; and when people began leaving class, she left in terror.
And she'd fled back to her dorm room. Alone on a Friday, with no one to talk to, she'd sent a tweet to Caroline back home. Except in addition to typing the wrong thing, she forgot to make it private, and now half her old high school was joining in on the fun.
And so she'd curled up with a movie and a bag of carrot sticks. Consternated, constipated, complicated, humiliated...really, who needed love, anyway?
I realize that I am (by my rough calculations) probably the 87th person in LJ Idol to link 'twitterpated' the word with ‘Twitter’ the social media service. BUT I DID IT ANYWAY!!
current mood: amused
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(12 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, February 6th, 2012
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6:52 pm - Week 13: Current Events
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Excerpted from EPA Report #30347-JX-19:
Verraro Property, Pleasant Oaks Township
EPA report
The Anthony Verraro property is 25 acres in unincorporated Bear County near the Village of Pleasant Oaks (see map attached). Public records show that Mr. Verraro has been illegally receiving waste material including toxic substances at his property since the early 1970s, and Bear County as well as state and federal agencies have pursued legal actions against Mr. Verraro since that time. Although the judgment of multiple courts determined that Mr. Verraro should remove various waste materials and adhere to the environmental guidelines, zoning ordinances and state laws regulating permitting of landfills, the problem continues.
The state EPA performed surveillance confirming that Mr. Verraro was indeed allowing trucks hauling various waste materials to dump on his property, in violation of state and federal environmental protection laws. Such materials have included unused materials from nearby construction sites, excess waste from various nearby auto repair businesses, and most disturbingly, unspecified materials from Xenogen Research, located approximately fifteen minutes away. Mr. Verraro has been observed taking money from parties dumping material on his grounds, in direct violation of state and federal statutes concerning the disposal of such substances.
Extensive litigation has taken place relative to this site, which Mr. Verraro has successfully fought with the aid of his legal representation, Crocker & Blackmon, P.C. The state EPA is currently mounting a new case against Mr. Verraro, which is expected to be completed in 18 months.
( story continues )
current mood: working
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(13 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, January 30th, 2012
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7:01 pm - LJ Idol week 12: Some Assembly Required
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Of all my teachers, none had a name as unfortunate as that of my middle school shop instructor: Mr. Wacker. I trust I needn't elaborate on what a bunch of thirteen year olds could make of such a sobriquet. The possibilities were obvious and thoroughly explored.
However, he had apparently made peace with this fact of his life, or perhaps he was simply oblivious; for in seemingly blissful ignorance he compounded the disaster of his name with his voice: a bizarre nasal drawl that turned English into strange atonal jazz. Not identifiable as of any national origin other than Midwestern United States, it still reduced ordinary speech to a soup of diphthongs and strained melismas, so that a phrase like 'drill press' somehow ballooned into eight syllables.
What's interesting about my encounter with Mr. Wacker, though, is not his name, or his voice, or even his drill press. What's interesting is what it taught me about fear.
The project involved working with lucite plastic. We each got a plastic cube, cut out of a big sheet, which we had to polish. Once it was polished, Mr. Wacker would take the cube, heat it up in an oven, then squash it to an inch thick in a die press. He'd then hand it back to us and we would drill holes into it and dye them; then he would put the squashed, drilled and dyed plastic in the oven again, where it would somehow form back into a cube. The result of all this work was a two inch cube with funny, colored, curved holes in it that...well, just sat there and looked like a clear cube with funny holes in it. We didn't generally make useful things in Mr. Wacker's class.
Polishing the cube involved shoving it up against a polishing wheel: several disks of felt clamped together and spun at 1500 RPM by a clanking motor. It turns out that felt gets rock hard at that speed, quite effective at shining lucite. Also, according to Mr. Wacker, at eating through watch crystals, melting plastic pens, or tearing flesh off of errant fingers. Cheerfully telling us this was his idea of Shop Safety with thirteen year olds.
Also, he continued, the thing could break your jaw. Imagine a tiny, fast version of the big wheel they get some eighty year old dowager from Ft. Lauderdale to spin on "The Price Is Right": she always pulls the wheel DOWN. This wheel spun in the same direction. "So you gotta be-a careful," Mr. Wacker said, pushing a cube against the wheel, "because-a this-a thing'll spin what-a-ever yer holding right out of yer hands. If it gets a hold-a the top edge-a the cube--"
And at this point the little plastic cube seemed torn from his hands by a demonic force, up and over the machine and into the wall behind. We all jumped as it slammed into the wall like a bullet.
"So-a be-a careful a-holdin-a the thing, will-a ya?" he admonished us.
Having seen this display, I should not have been surprised the first time it happened to me. But I WAS surprised that first time. And the second. And a number of times after that. Surprised isn't really the word, either. A better one might be 'terrified'.
I quickly learned to fear the polishing wheel. Of course, I never actually got hurt, never mind killed; but at thirteen, a two-inch hunk of plastic flying past my face at eighty miles an hour was as close to death as I cared to get. I began to dread shop class. I was falling behind: I couldn't move on to the next project until I'd finished my cube, and I couldn't finish my cube until I got it polished. Mr. Wacker wouldn't help; the point, he told me, was for ME to learn how to use the wheel. Anyway, I'm sure he thought to himself, What kind of pansy boy is afraid of a spinning felt disk? Certainly that's what the other boys in the class were starting to ask. For that matter, so were most of the girls.
But I couldn't bring myself to do it. That wheel had me cowed. I'd stand in line to use the disk, and when my turn came, I would march up to the wheel, stare hard at its spinning maw...and step aside, politely inviting the next person to go ahead of me. And I'd wait there, and then when it was my turn again, I'd invite the person behind him to take a turn.
I got some very strange looks from people that way.
Eventually I conquered my fear. Or maybe I just made peace. I learned to use the wheel, and got a mostly polished cube, good enough to get a B- on the project. Life moved on, and I started the next project: a flat blade screwdriver that came out quite well. I still use it to this day, to scrape nasty things out of the cat litter box.
But the sense of pride I felt in subduing the polishing wheel doesn't echo in my mind anymore. The fear is all I really remember.
current mood:  uncomfortable
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(8 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, January 23rd, 2012
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7:29 pm - Counterintuitive II
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"He's cute."
That was the first thing Mary had thought when she saw him.
Her second thought was, "I'll never be able to talk to him."
This stupid party Andie dragged her to: exactly what was she doing here? She longed again to turn and run away. The first time she mentioned this to Andie, her friend had threatened to nail her shoes to the floor. Now every time she caught Mary glancing at the door, Andie mimed using a nail gun on her feet.
It was funny the first couple times. Now it was just getting annoying.
So Mary just stood there at the edge of the room, swirling the Coke in her cup, taking a nervous sip every so often. She tried not to look at anything or anyone in particular, which was easy enough to do. There were a lot of people at this party: frat boys talking loudly, kids in tie-dyed t-shirts and long, dreadlocked hair, girls with thick, black mascara and chains on their pants. And him: black jeans and sneakers, lean but sort of muscular, wearing glasses that somehow didn't make him look the least bit dorky. His hands looked strong but gentle, and she began to think of them taking her hair and...
With an effort, she wrenched her eyes away. Out of some perverse loyalty, Andie insisted on staying near her, even when it was clear she wanted to mingle. If she kept looking at him, Andie would notice.
So she looked in the opposite direction, trying to focus on people dancing. This worked for all of thirty seconds until someone blocked her view by moving in front of her.
"Excuse me..."
A voice in her head sounded an alarm.
Oh. My. God.
It was him.
He was standing in front of her, talking to her.
She looked up at him, terrified, wondering what to do. He had a puzzled look on his face. Why was it puzzled? Had she done something wrong? Was he disgusted with what she was wearing?
"...what kind of drinks do they have? Is that Coke or Pepsi?"
A question. He was asking a question. That meant she should answer. What to answer? She replayed his question in her head...
"Umm....it's a Coke."
He shook his head with a smile. "Figures. They never have Mr. Pibb or anything. Mind if I...?"
He pointed at the table of drinks, and it dawned on her she was blocking his way. She edged out of the way, muttering an apology so quiet he could never have heard it. Filling a cup from a two-liter bottle, he held it towards her. "Need a refill?"
She stared at him like a deer caught in headlights, and finally shook her head no. With a shrug and a nod, he wandered off.
Mary stared after him, wondering if she would throw up right there. She'd actually talked to him. The butterflies in her stomach were from terror, but also exhilaration: she'd actually had a conversation with a cute guy.
It was several seconds before she realized Andie was watching her.
"Ohmigod. You like Shaun Foley. You think he's hot!"
"No!" Mary lowered her eyes to her drink, hoping her cheeks did not look as red as they felt.
"Yeah, you do. I saw you watching him for the last hour."
"I was not, Andie!"
"Well y'know, I'm pretty sure he's single. You should go talk to him."
"No, that's...Andie, I don't want to--"
"Yeah, you do. C'mon, you'll hate yourself if you don't do this..." And without further warning, Mary spilled her Coke as Andie seized her left wrist and dragged her towards Shaun, Mary struggling like a terrified animal at the end of a leash.
current mood:  scared
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(7 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, January 16th, 2012
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11:44 pm - Now in full Stereo(type) Sound!!
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In a recent online conversation, a friend of mine talked about how witches were portrayed in a television show she saw: a stereotypical, negative portrayal. It annoyed her: "You will never see a witch on television who is a relatively normal member of society who looks and acts and holds down a regular job like everybody else, but happens to practice witchcraft." It made me think about stereotypes and how classes of people are portrayed in the media.
Stereotypes and cliches have their place in fiction: they provide an easy way to get an idea across by using a "preset"--a preformed idea the writer trusts her or his audience will recognize and trigger an immediate set of associations. Witches are spooky weirdos; construction workers are crass and boorish; politicians are sniveling and greedy; rock stars are arrogant and androgynously beautiful hedonists; and so on. This bag of preformed ideas is especially useful in comedy, where the odd juxtaposition of common ideas is key; using preformed types just let the jokes be told more efficiently. Think of The Simpsons and how almost every second string character--Kent Brockman, Principal Skinner, Otto the Bus Driver, Diamond Jim Quimby, Reverend Lovejoy, Comic Book Guy, Moe The Barkeep--is built on a common stereotype (the smarmy newscaster, the humorless educator, the stoned burnout, the clueless politician, the self-obsessed pastor, the anti-social nerd, and the cranky business owner, respectively).
Using them is okay as long as the stereotypes aren't so outrageous as to be offensive. But that leads quickly into trouble: everyone has a different "offense" threshold, as my friend demonstrates. Most people likely don't mind the narrowness of the "weirdo witch" stereotype, but it rubs her the wrong way.
A lot of these stereotypes don't bother me in particular because they don't run counter to my particular set of expectations. This is part of the definition of "privilege": I'm privileged because the people who make these shows are still, on the whole, a lot like me: white, male, heterosexual, and largely Judeo-Christian agnostic or apathetic (and the ones who don't fall in that set typically don't have enough clout to change things). If I fell outside that set, I'm sure I would feel more uncomfortable with them.
A good example: I recently got season one of The Boondocks on DVD, Aaron MacGruder's account of growing up African in a pricy Chicago suburb. It's a great show--I laugh hard at least twice per episode--but I also find it unnerving. MacGruder is making a comedy show by African-Americans, about African-Americans, and for African-Americans, and as someone certifiably not African-American, I sometimes feel uncomfortable, an odd, awkward feeling of not quite belonging. "Is it okay for me to laugh at this?" I sometimes wonder, because the jokes generally center on what MacGruder sees as the stupidity and excess of Black culture in America...and yet it also argues that Black culture is like that because it has been penned in by white Americans, or at least a small number of very rich white Americans. Watching it, I often get the eerie sense that what I'm watching isn't a party intended for me--it's for someone else. I'm welcome to stay and have a beer; I don't exactly feel excluded. But it's not my party.
And, uncomfortable as I am, I suspect it's good for me. For a brief few moments, I feel what it must be like for those who don't hold the privilege I've been granted but never earned.
current mood:  thoughtful
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(comment on this)
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| Monday, January 9th, 2012
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1:16 pm - LJ Idol Week 9: Counterintuitive
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"Will you hurry up?"
For seemingly the thousandth time, Mary fidgeted with her shoelaces. She considered her shoes again as she did so. Had she made the right choice? Andie had insisted that this party would be completely casual; no one was going to care if she wore her blue sneakers or the red ones. In fact, the only censure she'd put on her was when Mary had first come out of the bedroom wearing heels, assuming they were appropriate: "Mare, no. That's waa-aa-aay overdressed for this."
Mary had been relieved. She didn’t feel like the kind of girl who wears heels.
Now Mary struggled with the laces on her red sneakers. Or pretended to, anyway. She wondered how much longer she could stall.
"Mare, will you come on?! I bet the party's already started!"
Well, so much for stalling. With a sigh, she stood up from the bed.
She did NOT want to go to this party. There would be...people there. People she didn't know. She hated this process of socialization, of meeting people. She didn't want to make friends--she wanted to have friends.
But the only friend she had made, so far, after a semester and a half as a math student at college, was Andie--her assigned dorm roommate. She had sort of latched onto Andie as her all-purpose social contact. This had its advantages: Andie, for instance, knew about things, like the party at the Quad building. But it also had disadvantages: for instance, Andie was now insisting that Mary actually go.
The idea of it made her quake inside. If she went, she'd have to talk to people. She'd have to listen to their words, and the way clues and inferences would curl around the words. The meanings of the words themselves were simple--it was all in the lilt of the voice, the tilt of the eyebrow on the third word. Mary was awful at this stuff; Differential Equations was simple compared to making conversation.
You always had to guess: what should I say next? What word will interest the other person more? What might push them away? And what would happen because of THAT? What if this guy is some kind of creep? Or is he really nice, and this isn't just an act? What to choose, what to choose?
She thought of the problem they'd been studying in stats class today: the Monty Hall problem. You're on Let's Make A Deal, and Monty Hall shows you three doors. Behind one is a brand new car; behind the other are goats. You pick the first door; Monty opens the third door and there's a goat behind it. Then he asks: "Do you want to stay with door one? Or choose door two?"
The answer, she knew, was to switch: it was mathematically more likely the car would be behind door two--not guaranteed, but twice as likely. In class today, she'd immediately seen this; no one else had. But nobody else would believe it was true that the other goat was probably behind your first choice of door.
That intuition abandoned her when talking to people. Should she laugh? Look serious? Leave the conversation? A lot more than a new car seemed at stake.
She sighed. How could statistics be easier for her than simple human interaction?
current mood:  optimistic
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(24 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, December 19th, 2011
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11:06 pm - Silent Monks Sing Hallelujah Chorus
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10:51 pm - Out of Sight
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devious