Opposite Ends of Infinity

Halfway Out of the Dark

2011-12-08T15:44:00.000-08:00

This post is brought to you by my brain. I just recently watched 'Christmas Carol', the 2010 Doctor Who Christmas special.

My brain immediately started composing lyrics to a song called 'Halfway out of the Dark.' However, it liberally stole from three other songs rather than making up its own tune. In my head, it starts slow with operatic lyrics from a single female voice - like a candle on a snowy night, Beauty and the Beast metal, or Abigail from the episode - and gradually ramps up into a rock anthem of the likes of 'Raise your Glass' or something by Queen that finishes triumphant to full orchestration. Lots of brass and electric guitar with the end a weird hybrid of jazz and rock.

I am actually rather sad that I have no composition skills and no idea what I'd want the lyrics to be.

For your enjoyment, here is the inspiration for a song called 'Halfway out of the Dark':

'No One Is Alone' from Into the Woods:

'Santorini' by Yanni (Especially the part 1:40 and on. The triumphant swell section):

'Almost There' from Princess and the Frog.

My friend wrote a book!

2011-11-16T08:36:00.000-08:00

So, my friend Cheyenne has been working on this book for several years and I've been one of her readers/editors. I must say, it is awesome.

Kama, sky pirate and Rakshasha, is thrown overboard by her own comrades, the privateers of airship The Devil's Mercy. Swimming for her life, she finds herself in the land of her birth, Dharmaghat, which she left behind as a young girl, seeking adventure and freedom.
It is the last place on earth she wishes to be.
Determined to return to the skies and exact revenge, she is caught instead in the intrigues waged in secret against her homeland, where foreign powers plot to colonize it's rich lands and make all her people slaves. Beaten but unbroken, Kama swears to bring about no less than total revolution, force her countrymen to raise their heads in defiance, even if just to have power enough to gain a ship of her own and chase her betrayers down.
In a world on the cusp of industrial revolution, while great empires struggle to divide all the world up between them, where magic is another branch of the natural sciences and steam powers the air fleets of both nations and pirates, adventure beckons the intrepid along a path of riches, romance, and bloody revenge.

So - I suggest reading it. It has shapeshifters (which I love) and holy enforcers and battles and runaway elephants and chai and is set in an alternative universe reminiscent of Victorian-era India. It's lovely. It has a dapper man, a huge tiger who I just want to give a great big hug, and a heroine who is fierce and makes an incredible journey.

The Devil's Mercy by Cheyenne Cartwright is up on Amazon right now, just for you: http://www.amazon.com/The-Devils-Mercy-Homeland-ebook/dp/B0068BWPVW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1321452661&sr=8-1

Nanowrimo Approacheth, 2011 Edition.

2011-10-21T12:00:00.000-07:00

Last year I even used the very same blog title: Nanowrimo Approacheth. I think I'm predictable.

My nano book from last year has been in constant development for the last 12 months. It's now about about 60k-ish words (I took a few months to contemplate midyear) and has changed dramatically. The fairytale aspect was dumped, the lovecraftian aspects pumped, Red's name changed to Zai, and I figured out my primary theme ('The third path and the trials involved in finding said path'). I managed to keep my roomie's interest through two pages of what I considered kind of boring transitional stuff, so that's a good sign that the whole thing isn't terrible. I am splicing in scenes with backstory (foil-flashbacks, though it remains to be seen if they'll work as intended.), and there are a couple of scenes that feel really good even where the rest feels a bit doughy. Overall, not terrible.

As of now, I won't have to rewrite anything to the extent that Princess needs it, though as I am adding scenes, I am rapidly approaching a weird section. I haven't decided if I want to rip the weird bit outs and put in a couple of flashbacks or to leave it as-is. It's not really a bad section, it's just not the correct section for the book.

Apologies that it's not at the 'send out to people' stage. :) I'm still working on it, though, albeit slowly, so there's that.

AS FOR NANO (ahem). I am using Nanowrimo this year to explore conflict and complex antagonists. My story was prompted by ideas from three of the vignettes I have lurking within my sketchdump of googledocs: Imaginary wings, shapeshifting dragons hiding among humans, and time loops.

The intended goal for the piece itself is to infuse the dark urban fantasy setting with low-grade horror, throw in healthy dose of mind-bending time travel, and have the reader seriously questioning whether or not the good guys SHOULD win by the end of the book. My goal for me-as-a-writer is to attempt higher-stakes external conflict and practice designing a bad guy who I can love to hate.

My three characters (who I am going to try and tight-focus on), are Natasha, Mercury, and Roland. Roland is, of course, the antagonist, because all the most badass characters are named Roland. *grins*

Narrative Kinks!

2011-10-20T16:40:00.000-07:00

Prompted by Sixwing and originating from Seanan-McGuire, I thought this was a really interesting meme-sort-of-thing where everyone is identifying what bits and baubles, story elements and narratives that each reader finds most fascinating.

My Narrative Kinks:

*Reunions - I've read books again just because they have a particularly satisfying reunion between two characters ripped apart at the beginning of the narrative. The whole running across a field of flowers and throwing themselves into each other arms is ever so very satisfying.

*Brothers and Besties - The easy comfort of people who platonically love each other is like catnip for me. It doesn't necessarily make for very interesting stories, but having someone There to Back You Up always makes characters so much more 3d for me. It's just, warm and fuzzy and oh so appreciated.

*Shapeshifters - Reading about act of shifting between one form and another gives me a very visceral sense of enjoyment. Bodies working, limbs moving, and just pure physicality in description.

*In-character decisions - I love it when I know a character well enough to say 'oh, yeah, they could never make a different decision'. Especially when the decision is made without hesitation.

*World consistency - I kink hard on worldbuilding. The more complex, rich and hopefully-coherent a world, the more I love it and the more I crave more.

* Non-gender-conforming characters - My favorite example of this is the Fool from Robin Hobb's books. But I also love characters like Alanna the Lioness, defying gender norms to achieve Knighthood. I like genderless and gender-stereotype-breaking characters. The more it doesn't matter 'what' they are or the more challenge is part of it, the better I like them.

* More-than-two people relationships that appear functional - I have a soft spot for triads and I hate love triangles. Usually the primary romantic conflict is 'you have to pick one!' the only reason for picking one is something stupid like 'because you can't have both'. Why the hell not? Give me one good reason besides convention! I understand if the 'why not' reason is, "Because they live in different dimensions and you are going to be trapped in one of them, but you have to choose so they can close the damn portal before reality breaks down." That's a legitimate reason why you can only pick one. I know that most people don't even think about it, but if a character has to pick one, it needs to be for a REALLY good reason.

* Hard journeys described in detail - I love adventure novels about the grit of the road, or journeys through the center of the earth, of pitching camp and watching the stars, of climbing mountains and hunting for food. I have no idea why, but I think they're awesome.

Writers, Business and Self-Help, etc.

2011-09-01T22:59:00.000-07:00

Just read The Business Rusch: Unexpected Gold in Self Help Books and I thought the list of items aimed at women (since Kristine Kathryn Rusch is reading women-and-money self helps books) that she replaced the word 'women' with 'writer' was especially apt. Writers are expected to submit to all sorts of bullshit to get published, and that ends up being interpreted as very deep passivity with respect to the business aspect of publishing.

The list:

•Writers undervalue themselves
•Nice writers don’t get rich (this works better in its original form: Nice girls don’t get rich. The whole nice girls concept became a book for one smart writer).
•Writers are uninformed about money
•Writers want to be hands-off with money
•Writers are afraid of what other people will think of them
•Writers strive for survival, not wealth
•Writers don’t have financial goals
•Writers don’t know their worth
•Writers don’t play to win
•Writers listen to naysayers
•Writers manage egos not wealth
•Writers trust the wrong people
•Writers give away their time
•Writers fail to negotiate
•Writers don’t get rich because they don’t envision themselves rich
•Writers suffer from learned helplessness
•Writers lack a sense of entitlement
•Writers fear calling attention to themselves
•Writers rarely speak up for themselves
•Writers rarely defend themselves
•Writers expect to be ignored
•Writers give up too easily
•Writers expect to be screwed as a cost of doing business
•Writers refuse to learn when and where they have power
•Writers let emotions get the better of them
•Prince Charming will never ride to the rescue. (In a woman’s world, apparently, Prince Charming is a husband; in a writer’s world, Prince Charming is an agent.)
•Inheriting wealth is not an investment strategy (or in writing world, counting on a bestseller is not an investment strategy).
•Learn to say no.
•Risk is not a synonym for loss
•There are no secrets
•Learning takes time and dedication

Now, there are some where I question how applicable they are. As an exercise, however, I feel re-framing a lot of the 'don't just let them walk all over you' advice from the over-generalizing and oft-sexist self-help books to apply to business-passive writers is very useful. It makes an interesting starting point for a writer exploring their attitudes towards publishing. I am somewhat of a Rusch fangirl, so I'll be watching this series as it develops. If I remember I have a blog, there might even be more posts about it!

(Also, have some hyphens. I appear to be hyphen-crazy tonight.)

Fictional Cities

2011-01-13T09:56:00.000-08:00

Begun 1/23/09 - I have no idea why I didn't post this then.

I was listening to someone several months [re:years] ago (Wish I could remember who. Drat!) talking about how the downtown center of St. Louis has been used to film post-apocalyptic features because the city center was developed as an industrial zone. Now that the industrial era has passed the area has run down, leaving buildings and empty streets for film-crews to occupy. The city center is no longer a living section of the city, though it is undoubtedly still occupied. It exists as a geographical relic to a time when the world valued different things. It is, like Detroit and other shrinking cities, a testament to how life can improve in ways that leave what society used to consider important behind.

When I read fantasy novels every book has a castle-in-the-middle system of building a capital. Every. single. city. is built like that. The nobility is on the top of the hill, the poor people are on the outskirts in the slums. There's a regimented sectioning of specific quarters with no bleed-over and every square inch is filled with either homes or artisans. Every once and a while I will read a book where the author takes into account other circumstances and occupations, like industry and river-side living and how agrarian society supports various settlements. All very academic and clean, despite descriptions to the contrary. The city is tiered, perhaps, or simply laid out or compact in some way. None of this is really bad, after all there are many real-life examples of cities that characterize various schools of thought (or lack of thought) utilized as a city grows.

What I really notice, though, is that it's all... present. The past seems to be irrelevant. The history of the city is just that, history. It has no impact on how the city is currently built. There's no, "So this was the old quarter... it's basically ruins." Or "The city grew too fast in this section and shrank again, leaving half-empty tenements." There's no slow trickle in or out that continues. It's either a massive movement in or out and the consequences thereof depending on whether there's a war or aliens or other substantial, direct influence on the population.

Most fantasy I've read is: "This is a living city." or "This is a dead city." Very few have dying cities. Very few have cities that thrive with dead flesh sitting in the very core.

Off the top of my head, I can't think of any cities that take into account the gradual movement of population depending on long-term societal forces. I'm not ridiculously widely read, though, and this is just my observation of what I have read. I would love to hear of any fantasy or science fiction that does take the movement of people from point A to point B into account when it isn't the result of an immediate disaster. (Oh wait... Ankh-Morpork. A slowly growing city with a history full of basements and a present full of social pressures upon population total. Well, that's one. Go Pratchett!)

I'm just thinking of things like gold rushes, factories shutting down or opening up, the Dustbowl, the urbanization of US culture, industrial revolution, colonization and subsequent cultural upheaval and hegemony, the slave trade, etc. Those are all 'influx' mechanisms that I cannot summon up fantasy population-movement examples for. I can recall whole settings, like Clockwork Heart for the industrialization of cities or Unicorn Highway for a treatment of the Great Depression, but the only whole cities I recall with living/dying aspects closer to realistic are cities based on real world places... and only then because the aspect stolen is romantic.

City construction for most fantasy I've read is just too simplistic.

Anyone have any reading suggestions for cities that are living and dying in interesting fashions?

Seventeen Magazine

2011-01-12T14:37:00.001-08:00

I had a subscription to Seventeen Magazine when I was in middle school and I read it cover-to-cover every month. (I still love Hanson. Unashamedly.) But I've always been a 'why' person. So I'd go through the quizzes and figure out WHY answer C gave three points, where answering all three points would give you a Saucy or Cool rating. Then I'd feel superior that I could point out the 'correct' answer to their personality quizzes.

Why was there a correct answer for a personality quiz?

#reverb10 - December 10th

2010-12-10T10:36:00.000-08:00

#reverb10 Prompt - Wisdom

Wisdom. What was the wisest decision you made this year, and how did it play out?

Wisest decision? I don't make a lot of big decisions over the course of any particular year that would impact me in a large way. In small ways, though, I think that choosing to meet people in person that I only knew from online is probably my wisest decision (or series of decisions) of the year.

I've met three people (at least!) in person this year who are fantastic. This wouldn't have happened if I'd not taken steps to contact and engage with them. It's always a risk to add people to my collection. I collect people, primarily strange or eccentric, but I normally don't go out of my way to do so. This time I did, and it was worth it.

Note to self for next year: Remember to take the emotional risk and engage with others, especially new and interesting strangers.

Woo!

2010-12-09T12:32:00.001-08:00

I forgot to update: I hit 50k for Nanowrimo on November 30th.

I've still got a little under half of the book to write. I'll keep ya'll posted. :)

Need a better nickname for my main character because she... never fully set into the one I had for her originally and it bothers me every time someone uses it for her. So. It has to change.

Any suggestions on good nicknames that someone might get while part of a pseudo-military organization? :)

And now for something completely different.

2010-11-24T14:32:00.000-08:00

Still writing! As of 1pm, I was at 37354 words, with a goal tonight 40k.

However, I plucked this meme from Antick Musings, just for fun since I'm the only one at work today and singing really loud while I putter through testing.

TO THE MEME, THEN!

All the animated movies in the world, sort of

- X what you saw
- O what you haven't finished/seen or saw sizable portions
- Bold what you loved
- Italicize what you disliked/hated
- Leave unchanged if neutral

CLASSIC DISNEY
-------------------------------
[X] 101 Dalmatians (1961)
[X] Alice in Wonderland (1951)
[X] Bambi (1942)
[X] Cinderella (1950)
[X] Dumbo (1941): I watched this over and over and over when I was a sprogling. I still remember snippets of dialog.
[X] Fantasia (1940)
[X] Lady and the Tramp (1955)
[X] Mary Poppins (1964): My adoration for Julie Andrews knows no bounds.
[X] Peter Pan (1953)
[X] Pinocchio (1940)
[X] Sleeping Beauty (1959)
[] Song of the South (1946): Never seen. o_O

DISNEY'S DARK AGE
-------------------------------
[X] The Aristocats (1970) : Because a cat's the only cat who knows where it's at.
[X] The Black Cauldron (1985): I only remember parts of this, though, but I'm pretty sure I got my hands on it since I devoured the books and went on an investigation into the sordid history of the film.
[X] The Fox and the Hound (1981): I don't remember WHY I don't like it, but I don't.
[X] The Great Mouse Detective (1986): This was one of me and my sister's favorites.
[X] The Jungle Book (1967)
[X] The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977)
[X] Oliver and Company (1986): I used to have a Christmas ornament that played one of the songs when you squeezed it.
[X] Pete's Dragon (1977): I've seen this, but I don't remember liking it very much at the time.
[X] The Rescuers (1977)
[X] Robin Hood (1973) : This one still pleases me to watch.
[X] The Sword In The Stone (1963): This is another one where I have whole long sections of dialog stored somewhere in my head that will pop out occasionally, complete with sound effects. I have no idea where they come from.

THE DISNEY RENAISSANCE
-------------------------------
[X] Aladdin (1992)
[X] Beauty and the Beast (1991): I honestly think the Beast is not very handsome in his human form. I have no idea what the animators were thinking.
[X] A Goofy Movie (1995): This one's just charming. A lot of good character interaction forming the basis of the emotional plot. The actual events of the movie were just, erm, vehicle.
[X] Hercules (1997)
[X] The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)
[X] The Lion King (1994)
[X] The Little Mermaid (1989)
[X] Mulan (1998)
[X] Pocahontas (1995)
[X] The Rescuers Down Under (1990)
[X] Tarzan (1999)

Note: These were all when was the correct demographic for all of the 80s-90s movies, so that's pretty much why I've seen everything.

DISNEY'S MODERN AGE
-------------------------------
[] Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001): I'm not actually sure I haven't seen this one. Hrm.
[X] Bolt (2008)
[] Brother Bear (2003)
[] Chicken Little (2005)
[] Dinosaur (2000)
[X] The Emperor's New Groove (2000): The emperor's lost his grooooooooove.
[X] Fantasia 2000 (2000): Stunning, but not as memorable as the original Fantasia.
[] Home on the Range (2004)
[X] Lilo & Stitch (2002)
[X] Meet the Robinsons (2007): Big head! Tiny arms!
[ ] Treasure Planet (2002): I really want to see this.

Note: I missed a lot of these, probably because I was end-of-high-school-beginning-of-college.

PIXAR
-------------------------------
[X] A Bug's Life (1998):
[X] Cars (2006):
[X] Finding Nemo (2003):
[X] The Incredibles (2004)
[X] Monsters Inc. (2001): The fur looks SO SOFT and I love it. This movie cemented my adoration of 3d animation by Pixar.
[X] Ratatouille (2007)
[X] Toy Story (1995)
[X] Toy Story 2 (1999)
[X] Toy Story 3 (2010)
[X] Wall-E (2008)
[X] Up (2009)

DON BLUTH
-------------------------------
[X] All Dogs Go to Heaven (1989): Another movie full of soundbites I can recall at will. I named my car after the main character, Charlie. I've watched it... a lot.
[X] An American Tail (1986): So sad and sweet and lovely. It's definitely better to watch when you know what's going on within the historical setting, though, because then there is a whole 'nother layer to everything.
[X] An American Tail: Fieval Goes West (1991): Inferior to the original, I still find parts of this movie to be little moments of brilliance. Overall, though, it went straight to 'goofy', leaving out most of the graceful, timeless elements of the first one.
[X] Anastasia (1997): All of the female lead music is in my vocal range, so I've got most of it memorized.
[X] The Land Before Time (1988): I watched this ten zillion times. At the end it says, "They grew up and lived happily ever after." I'm not sure why they made equals when WE KNOW they grew up and lived happily ever after. Oh wait, I do know why. Money. >_>; None of the sequels count.
[X] The Pebble and the Penguin (1995): Don't remember much, but I know I watched it.
[X] Rock-a-Doodle (1991): It's ELVIS and rock and roll and so silly. Don't judge me. *grins*
[X] The Secret of NIMH (1982): This movie is amazing and hands-down one of the best animated movies ever.
[X] Thumbelina (1994): "Romeo and Juliet were very much in love when they were wed. Were are they now? They're DEAD!"
[X] Titan AE (2000): The dialog hurts. The plot is stereotypical. But this movie is so utterly gorgeous. The main character for this one is the same model as the male romantic lead from Anastasia, or close to it.
[X] A Troll in Central Park (1994): I watched, but I barely remember it.

Note: I. Love. Don. Bluth. The animation style of all of his movies is so distinctive that it's an intrinsic part of my childhood and has influenced both my art and animation (if I animated) styles.

CLAYMATION
-------------------------------
[ ] The Adventures of Mark Twain (1986)
[X] Chicken Run (2000): First movie I saw out of this studio. Amazing.
[X] Corpse Bride (2005): It was okay, but nothing special.
[X] James and the Giant Peach (1996): I adored the book, so I had to watch the movie. He didn't screw it up. :)
[X] The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993): Why is it 'hail to the pumpkin song'? That makes no sense. It SHOULD be 'hail to the pumpkin throne' because that rhymes (same 'o') and ALSO makes sense. Gah. It drives me absolutely bonkers every time I see it.
[X] Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)
[X] Coraline (2009): I pretty much love Gaiman anything, and this was a satisfactory interpretation, preserving the Creepyness of the book.

CGI GLUT
-------------------------------
[ ] Antz (1998)
[] Bee Movie (2007)
[X] Happy Feet (2006)
[X] Ice Age (2002)
[] Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006)
[] Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009)
[X] Kung Fu Panda (2008)
[X] Madagascar (2005)
[] Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (2008)
[X] Monster House (2006): I really liked this one.
[X] Over the Hedge (2006)
[X] The Polar Express (2004) I think I saw this one, but I might have thought it was creepy and blocked the memory.
[X] Robots (2005)
[ ] A Shark's Tale (2004)
[X] Shrek (2001)
[X] Shrek 2 (2004)
[X] Shrek The Third (2007)
[ ] Shrek Forever After (2010): There was a fourth?
[O] Monsters vs. Aliens (2009): I've seen big chunks, but never the whole thing.

IMPORTS
-------------------------------
[X] Arabian Knight (aka The Thief and the Cobbler) (1995): This is a wonderful, wonderful movie. It's got a unique art style and utilizes optical illusions as part of the fabric of the world. Excellent and I recommend it all over. I watched adverts for this forever, since it had some production issue (?) and was delayed for years and years.
[X] The Last Unicorn (1982): Classic. Essential.
[ ] Light Years (1988)
[X] The Triplets of Belleville (2003)
[ ] Persepolis (2007)
[ ] Waltz With Bashir (2008)
[ ] Watership Down (1978)
[ ] When the Wind Blows (1988)
[ ] Wonderful Days (2003)
[ ] Yellow Submarine (1968)

STUDIO GHIBLI/MIYAZAKI
-------------------------------
[X] The Cat Returns (2002)
[ ] Grave of the Fireflies (1988)
[X] Howl's Moving Castle (2004): One of my all-time favorite movies ever. I can watch this, finish the credits, then watch it again.
[X] Kiki's Delivery Service (1989)
[X] Laputa: Castle in the Sky (1986)
[ ] Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro (1979)
[ ] My Neighbors The Yamadas (1999)
[O] My Neighbor Totoro (1993)
[X] Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984)
[ ] Only Yesterday (1991)
[ ] Pom Poko (Tanuki War) (1994)
[X] Porco Rosso (1992)
[X] Princess Mononoke (1999) I didn't like this when I saw it the first time. It was 'too weird'. Also since it was the first Miyazaki i'd ever seen. It has since grown on me.
[X] Spirited Away (2002): I can also watch this one over and over. It never gets old.
[ ] Whisper of the Heart (1995)
[ ] Ponyo (2009): Soon. Soon.

SATOSHI KON
-------------------------------
[X] Millennium Actress (2001): This was so amazing. I want to tell everyone to watch it, but no-one has ever heard of it.
[X] Paprika (2006): I absolutely adore this to little bit.
[X] Perfect Blue (1999): This one hurt my head. Very dark.
[ ] Tokyo Godfathers (2003)

SHINKAI MAKOTO
-------------------------------
[ ] She and Her Cat (1999)
[ ] Voices of a Distant Star (2001)
[ ] The Place Promised in Our Early Days (2004)
[ ] 5 Centimeters per Second (2007)

OTHER ANIME FILMS
-------------------------------
[X] Akira (1989): I saw this when I was really young. So when I watched it during high school when I could actually remember images, I was really weirded out by the constant sense of deja vu.
[ ] Angel's Egg (1985)
[X] Appleseed (2004): The movie takes a couple of watches to make any sense, but I'm in love with Briareus, the cyborg.
[ ] Appleseed: Ex Machina (2007)
[ ] Arcadia of My Youth (U.S. Title - Vengeance of the Space Pirate) (1982)
[X] Cowboy Bebop: The Movie (2003)
[ ] The Dagger of Kamui (U.S. Title - Revenge of the Ninja Warrior) (1985)
[ ] Dirty Pair: Project Eden (1987)
[X] End of Evangelion (1997)
[X] Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone (2007)
[X] Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance (2009): Rainbows make EVERYthing better.
[] Fist of the North Star (1986)
[ ] Galaxy Express 999 (1979)
[X] Ghost in the Shell (1996): Didn't like it when I watched it. At all. I still think it's got a better concept than execution, but I should probably watch it again.
[X] Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004)
[ ] The Girl Who Lept Through Time (2006)
[ ] Lensman (1984)
[X] Macross: Do You Remember Love (U.S. Title - Clash of the Bionoids) (1984): I think I watched this with Josh? I know I watched Macross Plus, which is not on here but has the most gorgeous music.
[ ] Memories (1995)
[X] Metropolis (2001): Pretty sure I've seen this once.
[ ] Neo-Tokyo (1986)
[ ] Night on the Galactic Railroad (1985)
[ ] Ninja Scroll (1993)
[ ] Patlabor the Movie (1989)
[ ] The Professional: Golgo 13 (1983)
[ ] Project A-ko (1986)
[ ] Robot Carnival (1987)
[ ] Robotech: The Shadow Chronicle (2006)
[ ] Silent Möbius (1991)
[O] The Sky Crawlers (2008): I own this, but haven't had a chance to watch it.
[ ] Space Adventure Cobra (1982)
[X] Steamboy (2004): The quintessential Steampunk movie. Um, ever. It also has a gorgeous representation of Victorian era architecture.
[ ] Sword of the Stranger (2007)
[X] Unico and the Island of Magic (1983)Weird. As. Hell. One of my favorite. I also have the first Unico movie, which is even weirder, where the bad guy gets /impaled/ on a steeple at the end of the movie.
[ ] Urotsukidoji: The Movie (1987)
[ ] Urusei Yatsura: Beautiful Dreamer (1984)
[ ] Urusei Yatsura: Only You (1982)
[ ] Vampire Hunter D (1985)
[ ] Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust (2000)
[ ] Wings of Honneamise: Royal Space Force (1987)

CARTOONS FOR GROWN-UPS
-------------------------------
[ ] American Pop (1981)
[X] The Animatrix (2003)
[ ] Beavis & Butthead Do America (1996).
[ ] Cool World (1992)
[X] Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001)
[X] Final Fantasy: Advent Children (2005)
[ ] Fire & Ice (1983)
[] Fritz the Cat (1972)
[ ] Halo Legends (2009)
[] Heavy Metal (1981)
[ ] Heavy Metal 2000 (2000)
[ ] Hey Good Lookin' (1982)
[ ] Lady Death (2004)
[X] A Scanner Darkly (2006): This counts as animation? o_O Huh.
[ ] Sita Sings the Blues
[ ] South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999)
[ ] Street Fight (Coonskin) (1975)
[X] Waking Life (2001)

OTHER ANIMATED MOVIES
-------------------------------
[ ] The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926)
[ ] Animal Farm (1954)
[X] Animalympics (1980): I wish this was on DVD, but the rights are in limbo and the only copies are crap.
[ ] Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon The Movie (2007)
[ ] Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker (2000)
[ ] Batman: Gotham Knight (2008)
[ ] Batman: Under the Red Hood (2010)
[X] The Brave Little Toaster (1988): Besides Dumbo, this was the other movie I watched until I could recite it. I can still do huge chunks of this movie for anyone who will sit still long enough to listen.
[ ] Bravestarr: The Movie (1988)
[X] Cats Don't Dance (1997): One of my sister's favorite.
[X] Care Bears: The Movie (1985)
[X] Charlotte's Web (1973)
[X] Fern Gully (1992)
[ ] G.I. Joe: The Movie (1987)
[ ] Gobots: Battle of the Rock Lords (1986)
[ ] Green Lantern: First Flight (2009)
[ ] He-Man & She-Ra: The Secret of the Sword (1985)
[X] The Hobbit (1977): The music. THE MUSIC. It is magnificent.
[X] The Iron Giant (1999): One of Josh's favorite.
[ ] Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths (2010)
[ ] Justice League: The New Frontier (2008)
[X] Lord of the Rings (1978)
[X] Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland (1992)
[X] My Little Pony: The Movie (1986): Hush, this was amazing. Another sound-bite repository in my skull is filled with this movie.
[ ] Pink Floyd's The Wall (1982)
[X] The Prince of Egypt (1998)
[ ] Powerpuff Girls: The Movie (2002)
[ ] Quest For Camelot (1999)
[ ] Ringing Bell (1978)
[X] The Road to El Dorado (2000): The main characters are so smarmy.
[ ] Shinbone Alley (1971)
[X] Space Jam (1996)
[ ] Starchaser: The Legend of Orin (1985)
[ ] Superman/Batman: Public Enemies (2009)
[ ] Superman/Batman: Apocalypse (2010)
[ ] Superman: Doomsday (2007)
[ ] The Swan Princess (1994)
[X] Transformers: The Movie (1986) They say 'damn' AND 'hell' and still get their G rating.
[ ] Wizards (1977)
[X] Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988): Still a favorite. Everytime I watch I pick up more little details.
[ ] Wonder Woman (2009)
[X] Balto (1995)
[ ] Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002): I love horses, I should have seen this. Not yet, though.

There are several not on here that I recall, but one which I don't remember. It might be Wizards? About a guy who is playing a board game and flies on dragons who produce their own lift by chewing stone and land by breathing fire? Still haven't figured out what that one is.

Also missing is Felix the Cat: The Movie, Magical Princess Gigi, and Clémentine (which is French and the main character is in a wheelchair). To be fair, though, the latter two are - I believe - compilation 'movies' of popular tv shows. They are, of course, fantastic.

Polish and Writing

2010-11-11T09:17:00.001-08:00

Yesterday, Gen informed me that I hadn't sent her any of my polished short stories.

Well, the conversation was mostly that Gen was sad that I didn't finish things. I informed her that it was patently untrue and bombarded her with old work I've just had sitting in my folders waiting for someone to read it.

No, nothing novel length polished. The only thing even remotely novel length that I've written is Princesses. I finished Princesses, but it's draft zero, needs a complete rewrite of the beginning, and I still have to write some song/poems for it and remove some of the detritus from the ending.

So I says to myself, I says, "You need to polish a full-length book and soon." Alright then, self, I will take your advice.

After Nano is over I would like volunteers to read my Draft Zero of Red Riding. It'll be rough, but entertaining. :) Any takers?

Additionally, you can peek at my writing sketchbook over at Dreamweb on Tumblr or I can send you larger pieces that I have hiding out online elsewhere.

The Empress has Lost her Groooooooove.

2010-11-10T07:30:00.000-08:00

I skipped writing on Sunday and only managed about 800 words a day on Monday and Tuesday. Luckily, I was a couple days ahead. Now... I'm basically right on track, but I've completely lost my groove.

Now, I'm going to keep writing because I'm not blocked. I have at least 20k words planned out and coalescing ideas about the end of the book. I know the shape and I know how to make it go even when I have only the cool parts planned out. I am not feeling it, though, and I'm thinking I'll have to do something else to improve the outlook because whatever I'm doing now is not working at all.

So, I'm off to find a source other than wikipedia and see if a little research will cheer me up. Josh flies in tonight which should improve my mood tenfold, but it remains to be seen if I'll get any writing time this weekend at all. *grins*

On Blog Comments

2010-11-08T13:25:00.001-08:00

I stumbled across something that affected me today while puttering through blogs.

"I translated it into Arabic, please let me know if you would like a copy." - Tima888 commenting on the post I am your Mother on Axis of Fat.

This rings a bell in the very deep part of me that likes to share knowledge, to feel the click of understanding between two participants in a conversation, and cherish the idea that anyone can boost the signal, even me with my cobbled-together homebrew operation. This is why I love the internet.

On a completely different note, I love westerns. There's something comforting-fuzzy about them in all their sepia-toned glory. There was one on during lunch at the cafe I write at and I have no idea what it was, just that there was a horse race and a woman who wore a french hat (a casquette!) and there was an awful lot of awkward romance. I kept trailing off writing and staring at the screen with a fond smile on my face. I'm pretty sure the horse was named Durango, they repeated it about a zillion times.

Nano report day 3 and 4.

2010-11-04T13:01:00.000-07:00

My novel - which I have named Red Riding - is going pretty well. I learned that I can crank about about a thousand words during lunchtime. This is an improvement from last year, where my lunchtime wordcount was about 600-800. I don't know where the extra 200 words an hour are coming from, but hey. Gift horse.

I'm still slightly ahead of the curve for when I start to fall behind because I'm, oh, GMing a game of Dnd or mooching gourmet food off of the guy who runs Exalted for us. Or, yanno, family holidays or the week that I'm /hoping/ Josh will get off work before they start whipping him to put more fur on digital puppets.

Either way! Writing.

In my story last night, my main character (MC) Red (Yes, I know she has a stereotypical name, but it's kind of required because of the natureof the fairytale/horror/epic poem storyline) was talking on the phone while riding in a taxi. Since my taxi driver could obviously hear her, he stopped her on the way out and basically told her she should claim her city as territory like her parents did to protect it from supernatural beasties. The only problem with this is, of course, that he used some really reactionary, extremist language to do so. So now Red is posed with a philosophical conundrum. She nominally agrees with him that someone should do something about the influx of dangerous netherworld creatures, though she's not convinced it should be her, but she is greatly disgusted at the blanket bigotry being applied to Physical In-The-World People-Eating Monsters.

Red got real uncomfy real fast, especially since her plan - even though she doesn't want to admit it - is to hunt down the people/creatures who attacked her friend and deal with them in what probably won't be a 'throw 'em in jail and let the authorities sort it out' kind of confrontation. She doesn't want this random guy's extremist argument tarring her actions, because she already knows she's stepping into a moral gray area by falling back to vigilantism however justified by the world built around her.

Anyways, this bit just came out of nowhere last night. Don't know if it will stick in the final version, but for Nano it's turning into an interesting part of the 'following in her parents footsteps' subplot.

Day 1 (and 2) report.

2010-11-02T12:19:00.000-07:00

Happy November!

I have begun Nanowrimo in earnest and have, much to my surprise, completed the first chapter of my scrawny little book as of *checks watch* about 1 pm today.

I'm not sure how I feel about how things are going so far. I'm writing in a new style, some of which is choice and some of which is just so utterly 'I have no idea what's going on' that I can barely stand it. I think it has something to do with the perspective I'm using. Since it's first-person and my main character is very no-nonsense, the prose is very no-nonsense.

I just hope it's not also very boring.

It seems to be the order of the day to not have wireless internet at any of the places I've been choosing to write, so I've been trying to scatter multiple copies of my baby book across several computers and have been attempting to use DropBox and Gmail to save bits and pieces, just in case. Never can be too careful.

First chapter events: Red shot a monster, called an ambulance, and chatted briefly with a psychopomp.

Current word count (CWC): 3800 or thereabouts.

Nanowrimo Approacheth

2010-10-29T10:37:00.000-07:00

I don't think I'm a natural blogger. I'm a wordsmith-in-my-head-on-boring-days-at-work writer, but not a sharer. I think I'd have to be more of a sharer to blog as often as some bloggers do. I love reading bloggers', um, blogs. I also love reading writers' blogs, but writers' blogs don't update nearly as often.

It occurred to me today that I haven't posted since July. July! I even skipped past my birthday and didn't even mention it. (It's the 19th of October, btw)

It's not that I haven't had anything to say. I simply don't post because I forget I have a blog. Blogging isn't in my blood like writing is.

I am doing Nanowrimo this year! (The peasants rejoice~) So, I figure if I remember that this is here, I might post updates on my progress.

Little Rules

2010-07-30T07:00:00.000-07:00

If I had a list of rules, this would be it:

* Never stop learning.
* Never apologize if you do not regret your actions, even if that is the appropriate social response.
* Do not make excuses. Explain if necessary, but own your responsibilities.
* Get pissed off if you're pissed off. Get sad if you're sad.
* If you have a problem, sort it out. Address the problem directly and asap.
* Don't try to fix everyone.
* Bask when others shine.
* Parse constructive criticism from opinion.
* Don't hurt people through carelessness and/or cruelty.
* Tell the truth as you know it.
* Omit the unnecessary.
* Communicate

The rule I break most often is 'Communicate'. I neglect to tell people what I'm doing, when, and with whom. This mis-communication has resulted in more than one upset person, especially if that person was one with whom I have plans or was supposed to have plans.

The thing I must work on the most is 'Bask when other Shine'. Sometimes I err in my judgment of situations and bring in a buzzkill. I've been scolded by others to be happy for them. I love it when my friends do awesome things, so I am always happy for them. :) When the high is half fantasy, however, it's hard for me not to say something - anything - because I know they'll be disappointed when the high wears off and reality sets back in. It's happened around me more than once, but I've been training myself to keep my mouth shut and trying to adopt an 'enjoy the high' outlook.

The rule I follow most closely is 'Never stop Learning'. :)

Playon is posting!

2010-07-27T07:22:00.000-07:00

Playon is starting to post results on their longitudinal study of WoW players. This is utterly awesome for the very simple fact that I love Nick Yee on principle. He's been a huge hero of mine since I found his Daedalus project while I was in college. I would definitely fangirl if I ever met him, if I could manage to say anything at all.

Anyhow, he and Nic Ducheneaut (who datamines and thus is cool in my book) have been posting very interesting things on their blog for the enjoyment of the internet.

One of the things I noticed they mentioned was that they have a higher reporting of women players in the US than average estimations. I'm thinking that's probably because someone (might have been me >_>, but I don't remember) posted the study announcement on WoW_Ladies. As far as I know, the WoW_Ladies livejournal community is the largest collection of wow-community-active women on the internet. The fact that many of the Ladies love this kind of thing probably has skewed the results a teeny bit.

So far, the most interesting post - for me - has been their Gender-Bending prelim results.

The graph above shows how often (in a ratio of days played) a male or female player chooses to play a character of the opposite gender. This isn't self-reported data, this is them combing through reported characters and registering their up-time. The very interesting thing is that women play male characters about 10% of the time and men about a third of the time.

I could posit why more males gender bend than women and it has to do with the concentrated gamer culture. Women get way more shit than men for being women (men get shit, but it's for other reasons) and compounding that with 'but y u play a boy?' it gets really uncomfortable really fast. My first 'main' charrie was a boy and it was frustrating for a long list of reasons. Now, I know that my experiences don't map 100% to other women gamer experiences, but I've been in enough discussions to know that the uncomfortable-factor plays a part in more than just mine. Not all, but a significant amount.

To change gears, however, on the longer-term that has nothing to do with male vs. female, one of my pet theories of why women don't reflect men in some activities is that there are a lot of women who are brand new to gaming within the last two or three years. It takes a while for the gamer mentality to percolate (for good or ill).

The activities that are ostensibly androgynous at a certain level of detachment/involvement take a while to get to. The only other example I have is that online long-format roleplayers (who essentially write collaborative stories online) often play only their gender when they first start out before creating characters of the opposite. Or authors only writing convincing opposite sex characters after they have matured as writers. It's a comfort thing, and a stereotype thing.

So when I say that women are new, I mean that for the women who didn't get their start in MUDs and wander into graphical MMOs, WoW was the beginning and it has only been out about 5 years and change. If women who game do not have the incentive of roleplay to explore opposite-gender characters, 5 years makes no impact.

I hypothesize that the ratio for women gender-bending will look the same as men in ten years - with the caveat that some gamer culture change would have to take place. Additionally, since the Playon survey does not include minors, I hypothesize that the picture of male minors looks an awful lot like the picture of female minors. I honestly think that gender-bending - all other things being equal (which they're not, but if they were!) - would boil down to simple experience.

The radical difference in the gender-bending ratios by gender ask 'Why?', which I think is an interesting discussion no matter where you're coming from.

Best Diet == Sustainable Lifestyle Change

2010-05-06T12:00:00.000-07:00

Diet:

1. The usual food and drink of a person or animal.

2. A regulated selection of foods, as for medical reasons or cosmetic weight loss.

3. Something used, enjoyed, or provided regularly

A diet-with-respect-to-food, for me, is a combination of all three of the official definitions. A enjoyable, sustainable regulation of intake that constitutes your usual food and drink. The concept that you can go 'on a diet' for a temporary period of time and expect it to have long-term results stops making logical sense after I process the word temporary.

My weight is my weight, and your weight is your weight. Even if there are health issues involved, or there is a lack of access to food that doesn't screw up your body, or you have psychological issues and damage as a result of any number of chronic or acute mental traumas, or you have low activity (for whatever reason), or any other factor that makes up your weight, your body is doing the best it can with the tools it has. Don't hate on your body for doing what bodies are designed to do.

Sometimes your body wonks out, trips a circuit breaker and goes haywire, or starts breaking down. Your body is a collection of algorithms, processes, responses, reactions, and automations. It doesn't necessarily know how things are going to turn out for you 10 years down the road, but it sure as hell is trying its best to run right now no matter the circumstances. Your meatsuit is gamely trying to keep up with everything happening that makes it respond and adapt.

The cumulative algorithm analogy, of course, works best under the assumption that you are not your body. That your totality cannot be expressed with the physical alone and, even further, that your physical is not under your direct conscious control. Treating the body as a machine, computer, or vessel works from the fundamental idea that human beings are greater than sum of their parts, that a human's gestalt incorporates the body, but is not defined by the body.

To be absolutely fair, certain disciplines can (or at least claim to) give you amazing conscious physical control over usually automatic processes. However, for me and most of the people I know, our bodies are like our cars. I know how to change oil and flat tires, but the intricacies of the timing belts for an interference engine is a little beyond my immediate capability or interest. Additionally, this viewpoint is based heavily on the mind/body dichotomies or mind/body/soul trichotomies of western thought.

My point is that the best diet is a sustainable lifestyle change. It's not an isolated thing. Every algorithm your body uses to determine weight and health has hundreds of variables, some as blatant as 'I ate a Big Mac every day for forty years and I feel fine' and some as subtle as 'I function better in dry climates or low altitude'. As Dianne Sylvan (in the post that prompted my post/rant) says, "Each person has a [...] healthy zone of size, diet, and activity in which they function optimally without having to do anything extraordinary to maintain that health." I wanted to jump up and down and scream 'Yes! This!'

Your body's doing the best it can with the tools it has. You can sometimes offer it better tools, but that's not always an option. Punishing yourself - or having others punish you - for 'choices' that you have no control over is ridiculous. If there are ARE choices you can make (the ones that are not dangerous, short-sighted, uninformed, or unpleasant), then give yourself different tools and don't confuse your body by swapping them around constantly.

I hit a point a year or so ago where my activity level dropped to nothing, my food intake shot up with access to new-job money and increased stress, I was coping with a new sleeping schedule, and trying to sort out a new routine. With all of these factors, I offered my body a set of tools that it took and I gained about 25 pounds. Not much, nothing near what others struggle with, but enough that I /felt/ the difference.

It was little things. I panted more going up stairs. I had less energy. I was crankier and even more asocial than usual. Tiny, insignificant things that said, "you are not running on all cylinders" and "there's a bug in the system."

I have a very blase attitude towards food and weight. I am privileged in that I could, in High School and College, eat whatever I wanted to and because of my activity levels, it never adversely affected me. Even when I grew out of 'gawky string-bean' and into 'I have hips!', I basically said, "Fuckit, I love my hips and anyone who tries to make me feel bad about them will get a sock in the nose." I'm lazy as hell, I know it, and I embraced it because I'm Contrary and trying to keep up with the 'ideal' was something my Contrary side fought against. When I started actually feeling physically bad I kind of had to smack myself in the forehead and say, "Well, shit. You can't lean on luck and circumstance anymore." I am thankful that I am employed and able-bodied enough to buy body-friendly food and perform physical activity. I made a lifestyle change towards walking and biking more places and started informing myself about ingredients and quantities of food I was intaking and lost the weight and - more importantly - returned to my happier, not-panting-up-the-stairs self.

I'm physically a very large person, about 200 lbs at my natural weight, and comfortable with that. By BMI standards, I'm fat. I only care because I prefer to be informed; I do not think it applies to me. It's my body, my machine.

Keeping myself within optimum operating parameters is sensible, so that is what I strive to do. My body is chugging along the best she can, and I respect her for her effort. It's not fair of me to blame her when nothing about her weight, shape, or size is actually her fault. She's simply a machine and what I put in is what I get out. If something breaks, I adapt for her sake and mine. She's not a conscious entity out to get me. I must be kind to her, accommodate her and understand her when she does something strange, but as a machine, she can never be inherently bad.

There is so much more to me than just my physical appearance, and I object most strenuously to being defined by it. I object to being defined by any facet of myself, but that's another rant for another time.

Anyway - a diet must be a sustainable lifestyle change if there is any hope of changing the operation and response of my body. Garbage in, garbage out. There is no ideal, shape or weight that anyone else can define for me because statistics can only go so far and - as part of how they are generated - are not tailored to individuals who are magnificent chemical cocktails and masses of moving parts, and any one part might never approach average (or even functioning). I can only attempt to put Non-Garbage in and trying to get Non-Garbage out. On top of physical food and exercise input, mental and situational factors can determine how much Non-Garbage I have to work with. This is obvious to me, especially after my stressful no-job period after college and watching my other stressed-out, unemployed friends gain weight.

The bottom line is that temporary diets are logically fallacious, my body can never be out to get me, and my weight is natural no matter what it ends up or how far from supposed 'correct' it gets.

The creek behind my apartment

2010-04-22T10:40:00.000-07:00

Behind my apartment there is a creek. It could also be considered a ditch since it serves the purposes of collecting runoff and swinging it down to the larger creek, and then to the river that runs through town. It is natural, or at least more natural than the ditches I grew up near - all concrete, uniform, and deep - named the Rough and Ready and the Oligarchy. I wonder if I could find the name for mine.

It's a lovely creek. There's about ten feet of grass, bushes, and trees on either side of it and the trees leaf out in the summer and keep our apartment cool. During the winter, I can look through their branches to the mountains and it gives the place a decent view.

Last night, rolling back to the apartment after a thrilling game of Mutants & Masterminds where we finished our story arc, Gen and I were startled by the noise of the creek. Normally, it's a dinky little crawdad-fishing kind of creek. Just a trickle of water. Last night, because of the rains, it had spread out into an 8-foot wide rush of runoff.

This morning, when I left for work, the creek was almost back to normal, but all of the grass around it was flattened and squashed into the mud as evidence.

The Silly Name I Use For This Blog

2010-04-09T10:00:00.000-07:00

I started this blog a few years ago and I always pick faintly pretentious names to represent me on the internet. Whenever I pick them I choose something that sounds like a name, and follows fantasy-writing naming conventions. It's an old habit, and despite my desire for web presence and the fact that I've even sent my mother the link to this blog (because, really, it's not like I post anything I wouldn't mind sharing with the universe), I still use made up names for pseudo-anonymity.

Anyone who knows me in real life - or anyone who cleverly delves through the internets to find out my secret identity - already knows my name. For everyone else, I'm comfortable responding to Alii.

That said, I pulled the name out of thin air. Supposedly nonsense, 'Alii' was to be a handle for a niche website and was never intended to creep into the internet at large. The reason I kept it is that the word alii means lady (more or less) in the Hawaiian language and there is meaning beyond just my own attributions. I used the name for long enough to attach it to a representational avatar rather than leaving it a one-shot name. It stuck, and when I wandered to write a blog it was my main handle at the time.

I've become rather fond of it, though I often wince that it uses two 'ii's, even though that's how the word is spelled. It's a 'weird' letter combination and while I like the name, it does not mark itself as non-European enough to explain the combo. Subsequently, I look like a goofball because it appears to use RavynSparklePryncess spelling, even though it is simply a not a Latin/Roman title. There is also a 50% chance that the first 'i' will be an 'l' when others spell it, despite not being a shortening of Allison. People's brains are marvelous things and that's what people expect.

Silverwing, however, is just silly. It's very dragony, used on New Age, dragon, and floofier forums, and a simple google search will turn up a young-adult series, several types of vehicles, a server on WoW and any number of other things. There's nothing to recommend using it. 'Silverwing' is very common while 'Alii' is not.

Perhaps that's part of the allure. I'm one of many Silverwings. My last name - the offline one - is long, somewhat complicated, and I can probably count on fingers-and-toes how many of us use it in the US. Distinctive, sure, but difficult to pronounce, consistently butchered in pronunciation and spelling, and generally bothersome in other respects. In some ways, saying, "Hey, I like dragons. Mmmm. I think I'll use the name Silverwing," shows that I consider my online stomping grounds a simpler place. The name is random, silly (Very silly!), and I didn't worry too much about it when I shoved it into the blog creation engine where it spat out my new url.

I can, however, change it. Unfortunately, despite the ability, it means that the address I've been using for several years will no longer work, which is a problem. As soon as I can figure that one out, I'll most likely change the url for this blog, and possibly eliminate 'Silverwing' from the name I use here altogether.

April Fools Rant : Warning for Language

2010-04-01T07:56:00.000-07:00

I don't know quite how to express my utter loathing for April Fools Day.

It's on this day that people 'prank' others with childish malice and flat out lie to each other about life status changes (I'm engaged/pregnant/moving to China!), or about things that will cause them to panic (Disaster in aisle four/your kid fell down a well/you're being fired) and is basically only fun for the people who are lying to the butt of the joke.

Did I mention I hate April Fools Day for the license it gives asshats to make shit up and scare people?

Now, I personally like April Fools jokes that are obviously jokes, or that are tongue in cheek, or that make you sit back immediately and go 'Waaaaiiiitttt, a minute....', but are essentially harmless. Things like ThinkGeek's Tauntaun sleeping bag, Wow's In-Game Pizza Service, and Google changing it's name to Topeka for today are hilarious and don't /hurt/ anyone, or make them panic, or do anything other than entertain. I enjoy these. They're pretty fantastic and actually clever.

Since April Fools Day isn't ultimately used for harmless amusement but by the horrible people who take advantage of others and then whine that we can't take a joke, however, I protest on fucking principle.

I end this rant with a huge fuck you to basically everyone. Especially those who try to get me to see the lighter side of April Fools. Yes. I know. It's cute. Now fuck off, it's still a horrible idea. No, I'm not taking myself too seriously, I'm trying to get through my day with a minimum of avoidable frustration. Come up with something clever if you want me to appreciate your prank.

Datamining is the MVP of the future

2010-03-30T18:00:00.000-07:00

Data Mining is the process of extracting patterns from data (Go, Go, Wikipedia!) and I firmly believe that being a Data Miner is the Most Valuable Profession of the future.

I bring this up because I watched a Ted presentation from 2006 last night by Hans Rosling on the topic of Social Health Statistics. This Ted talk is the best presentation I've seen in forever. I'm still puzzling over whatever gorgeous program he used for the graphics that did such an excellent job conveying information instantaneously with very little explanation. The two points of the talk that are absolutely required are at 3:50 and 11:30. Rosling stands in front of the graph while it is animated and gestures at the data points explaining why they are moving in the direction they are moving. Later in the video, he states that his interpretation of the data is made possible because the has been aggregated and formatted in a way that it is easy for humans to grok.

What is marvelous about this talk is that, in 2006, Rosling speaks of Data Mining without referencing it by name. He ends his talk by saying we need a 'garden' of interfaces to the vast amount of data we've been hoarding like misers against a time when we will actually be able to use and understand it. Our recent history is boiled down to data points, numbers and keywords, and stored in banks within organizations who, as Rosling says, have an attitude like the Head of UN Statistics he mentions. These organizations say 'we can't do it', at least as of this talk in 2006, but the option is there for others to try.

Data Miners are already digging fast and well, trying their hand at these banks of information, and it is only getting more prevalent as 2010 flows past. Data Mining, the type that shoots for human readability, combines art and statistics while providing relevance and suggesting relationships. This budding profession requires someone who has a notion of presenting information in understandable ways as well as someone who can wrangle the analysis required. Most of the data representation ends up in a graphic, if not a graph, and if it moves or is interactive, so more the better. Data Mining leads to Chart Porn. (Totally Safe-For-Work despite the name!)

Sites like Data Mining, Strange Maps, Information is Beautiful, and Weather Sealed, present data in visual form, extracting meaning (or at least interesting relationships) out of meaningless heaps we've saved just in case we might need them. Additionally, ever more specific datasets can provide very specific information about just how broad or narrow certain trends can be. For WoW geeks like me, there is Armory Data Mining, which mines through the huge database called the Wow Armory that Blizzard provides for public access.

To rephrase the earlier definition, Data Mining (and subsequent Chart Porn ^^) is the process by which we take large quantities of data and poke at it until it makes a picture.

Science Fiction has been pointing at this idea and jumping up and down about it for years. The books/series that I recall off the top of my head that mention the idea of Data Mining and the representation of data for easy consumption are Otherland by Tad Williams, and Gun With Occasional Music by Jonathan Lethem. In each of these books, they contain the seed of an idea in which data (news, in this case) is aggregated in a visual or aural fashion, through what I assume is a process very like Data Mining, and presented to a character.

Otherland is especially interesting because Williams uses the same metaphor that Rosling does in his Ted presentation, a garden. This garden has roses and weeds, and each plant and flower is weighted by so that color, health and other variables to correspond to frequency, reliability and whether or not the observer considers it a positive or negative trait.

Gun With Occasional Music takes a different route, as a science fiction dystopia that extrapolates from a point where visual media never really took off, and a morning symphony provides the daily news. A low, ominous tremolo suggests violence and percussion suggests murder, which sparks the main character to pick up an investigation. Both of these representations utilize Data Mining for information presentation, except they pull from a constantly changing dataset.

With these representations comes that the idea that any representation of sufficient complexity could be utilized, especially to assist in keeping the differently-abled up to date using sound, visuals, numbers, and patterns. Humans are wild awesome at finding patterns and connections even where none exist.

Designing weighted patterns to put value and meaning in context, Data Miners provide one of the most valuable tools that our future has. With the volume of information at our fingertips getting more and more overwhelming, another layer of abstraction is absolutely necessary to be able to see the big picture. The 'big picture' requires us to zoom out, and the bigger the picture the further out we must go.

The Wikipedia article on Data Mining does not mention this sort of 'social' application and sticks mostly to business and science. However, Google proves that the social applications are already being explored. Google's algorithms operate on the basic assumption that you can mine almost any dataset for relationships and outside of their intense search algorithms, their Google Reader has a feature where you ask it to find interesting things based on what you've already said you liked. Similarly, most music databases can stream radio for you based on a 'seed' song or artist because it has gathered data from others who like the same things that you do. Data Mining as a concept has been around since the 80s and is being applied everywhere in small ways now that the internet has provided access to data to work with.

But what is it GOOD for? How is this useful other than in a 'information is fascinating' and beyond 'big picture'?

One limited example is that Data Mining can be coupled with sufficiently complex Artificial Intelligence to look for flagged relationships within datasets. Credit card companies and other large corporations that deal with fraud in billing look for things like 'Purchase in Houston', with an immediate 'Purchase in Anchorage', and then again a 'Purchase in Houston'. The AI needs to be able to discern whether or not that is suspicious behavior (maybe they're local business selling through the internet?) and if someone's card needs to be frozen. My mother once got a call querying her if she'd used her credit card for gas. She had the previous week, for the very first time, and it was atypical enough that the credit card company gave her a courtesy call to make sure her card hadn't been stolen. Even ten years ago it was not usually people flagging these instances. AI Data Mining of this sort is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars each year as it cuts down fraud.

Another example of what Data Mining is useful for comes about through Facebook, Myspace, and other high-volume social networks which have huge marketable databases. However, how ethical is it for the company that owns this database full of such an enormous volume of personal information to sell it to marketing firms or other places who might want to peek at all that delicious data? Not only does Data Mining present opportunities for marketing, but it also brings up huge glaring questions on how this information can be used while still protecting the individuals who provided the information.

I'm of the opinion that some data is meant to be mined, as if someone brought a dump truck of ore to your foundry and said, "find me something useful!" As a caveat, however, I think that the data should have been collected specifically to be mined, like the US Census and the daily news. With consent being the biggest factor, I believe that personal information should be protected as a type of media.

Professor Lev Manovich of the University of California, San Diego, suggested in 2001 (Nearly a decade ago!) that Databases are a Symbolic Form. In other words, he posits that databases, because of their unique structure without a beginning or an end, should be considered a new form of media. In this, I use the word database rather than dataset, primarily because database includes some element of structure and meaning to the collection of data and can include objects instead of datapoints, while dataset is a more mathematical term where the data within the set must have meaning applied.

Traversing a database, then, according to Manovich, is a non-linear way of navigating our shared experience. Where a story has a narrative and a photograph encourages movement of the eye to each point of interest, a database uses a webbed approach to convey information driven more by the user than the artist who created it. As anyone who has lost hours on TvTropes, Youtube, or Wikipedia could tell you, this type of presentation - a media full of other media, a meta-media - can be both edifying or a total waste of time. Manovich ends his essay by stating that there is nothing inherent within a database that 'fosters a narrative', but there are hundreds of thousands of narratives - a linear path compatible with human interpretation - lurking within any one database. These narratives, which he also refers to as interfaces, are the 'garden' of Rosling's Ted talk. Manovich talking about how the seeds from which the flowers grow are a type of essentially different new media.

With the idea that databases are a new media comes the idea that they can be treated ethically as media. In this vein, databases and datasets should be subject to a new form of copyright law incorporating basic rights of privacy wherein the individuals providing their information have the right to withhold it from the repository. If by simply living we are constantly creating and generating information for the consumption of others, then we should be able to hold the copyright on those creations like we do other types of created media.

With these concerns in mind, the internet and its ever-growing network of fascinating information - mostly unintentional and full of meaningful implied spaces - now gives us the capability of taking a stab at something very much like Asimov's Psychohistory to predict what the general trend of events. We're approaching the point where everyone's personal data on the web, tracking their online lives and the gaps representing their offline lives, could feasibly be used to predict the future the same way we predict the weather. Google searches can already anticipate outbreaks of the flu and it is only a matter of time before judicious Data Mining turns up other trends and behavior we can identify as important.

We desperately need this type of data acquisition and make-sensey-ness in every field under the sun. The social sciences, government, business, medicine, education, computer science, news, the internet, and I need data mining. And, really, how can you say no to the internet?

This will be a baseline skill required everywhere once people figure out that this IS a skill, an art, and a profession. It is a field that requires new, developing structures and a way to compartmentalize so that people who do not know HOW this works still know they can hire a Data Miner to perform crucial functions. Even with an official title and trying to wedge themselves into other professions while requiring similar skillsets, Data Miners will be hired to the AI/Fraud department of credit card companies, to high-profile research projects that need a code monkeys(for science!), to marketing companies hoping to pinpoint their demographics by prodding twitter, and to news outlets to produce pretty graphics for multimedia news presentation.

We need this. It is a skill and a profession that should be taught as such. Just as there are programmers, researchers, artists, and statisticians there should be data miners who incorporate elements of each of these other professions and combines them into a field the future will find essential.

Computer Science and Institutional Sexism

2010-03-26T15:33:00.000-07:00

My senior thesis was a rather pathetic grasping towards a concept that never ended up fully coalescing over the course of my final year at school. What I wanted to write and what I was writing were so completely different that I gave up trying to reconcile the two.

To make it clear: I'm very bitter about my actions during this period and am frustrated at my pure, unadulterated failure to produce something worthwhile.

The man who mentored me was a typical thesis adviser; Distant, busy, and overawing. Credited, he tried to steer me out of my directionless flailing, but the suggestions only heightened my stubbornness (Woo. I love it when my Contrariness kicks in.) and left me scrounging for data and digging through research barely related to my desired thesis. The paper ended up being a short, thinly-veiled rant about my educational experience.

As an example of how vague I ended up being was how dealt with the question, "Well, WHY do we need more women?" I had a proto-answer, but it wasn't clear, firm, or easy to articulate. Of course now, when it no longer matters for my thesis, I've got an uncomplicated answer that I firmly believe in. We need more women because men don't have a monopoly on good ideas. Every individual able to contribute means a bigger pool of good ideas that might solve problems in ways that someone else might never think of. The top 1% of a larger group is a larger pool of talent to draw from. With the future in the hands of technologists, we need all the pool we can get.

That I could not answer that question says a lot about how hard I worked when I was writing my thesis. The results of my flailing were that I had no thoughts on curricular improvement, nothing to show for my research except an ambiguous hand-waving solution of 'teacher reeducation' (to what purpose I could not say) and the goal of further data acquisition. Not my finest hour. I admit that I was lazy - pure and simple - and there was so much more I could have done.

Coulda-woulda-shouldas aside, I have been continuing my research in a haphazard fashion since I graduated. I can only imagine that this preoccupation is an attempt to salve my bruised ego by rectifying a failure, if only in my own understanding of the topic.

My original concept of my thesis was this:
"Women - as a group - have such a goddamned hard time forcing themselves over the learning curve because the theory and books and logic for most institutionally taught CS were written for men, by men."

Self-indulgent, pretty narrow, and not precisely true. With the proper background information and framework around it, it would be a fascinating thing to study in and of itself, but I had neither background information nor framework to even contemplate a study. Before, my understanding of this topic was just some nebulous 'wait- I think... er-' and there was no supporting evidence. I did find papers about the physical and mental differences between genders, some interesting research about spatial vs. relational learning, and gender differences in how students connect to material, but I had no idea how to use the information in them to clarify my point.

My thesis was rooted in the disconnect that I experienced in what I wanted out of my CS degree and what was available to me, similar to how the thesis I wanted was not the thesis I wrote. Because of my lack of knowledge, I conflated my disconnect with the constant sexism I experienced.

I would like to believe that attributing my frustration with the structure of CS to gender is understandable considering that, currently, CS curriculum is directly related to CS culture, which is festooned in sexist trappings. However, curriculum can be separated from culture on a structural level, if not an individual level, so the tendrils of sexism can be severed, with time and effort, once they're identified. A sexist culture can be hard to change, but modifying the method of transmission can make it equally hard to perpetuate.

I've been to Grace Hopper all of once, and at the conference I don't remember hearing the world sexism. It is very possible that the conference did tackle this topic over and over again and that I was still self-absorbed enough to ignore mentions of sexism and feminism 'cause they were scary *isms. I do remember, however, that I was very focused on my thesis at the time and I went to every panel/discussion/lecture even remotely related to how to improve CS so that women were more comfortable there. No mention of feminists and the substantial work done to chart and define sexism.

Instead, we talked about how rough it was to be part of a work community because we're disrespected, how important it was to educate girls early to show that science was cool, and what kind of effort we put forth to support women who don't leak from the pipeline. Every single inspirational story had a woman kicking ass and taking names and conquering a male field because she was the BEST at what she did. I am in awe of the sheer tenacity and obstinacy it took for every single one of the panelists or keynote speakers to become the amazing women they are today.

Sexism, if it was mentioned at all, was never discussed but obliquely even though every topic was related. Since I'm oblivious to reality, I never picked up on it. (I am pretty oblivious most of the time.)

Women working in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) deal with carving out a space and getting results through action. Every counter-move is a practical, algorithmic approach to systematically subverting sexism. Without referencing feminism, however, there is a significant lack of shared definitions except for the above-linked 'pipeline'. Since there is such a focus on the 'How to Fix' - we are scientists and engineers, after all, and sometimes the stereotypes have the ring of truth - there is very little emphasis on 'How to Talk About It'. It's hard to come up with feminist language without the benefit of a feminist vocabulary.

All I had was the everyday, ongoing, low-grade, and omnipresent enemy that I had no name for, while the people on the other side of campus were talking about *isms and the history of *isms and how they're viewed today. Every thought I had that touched upon sexism was along the lines of, 'My goodness, I'm the only girl in my class and my teacher is surprised and gratified that I'm not asking him to do my homework for me'. Or, 'we lost one of the three freshman girls this year'. There were no words for this, only an unease that had no outlet other than to prove that I can do it just as well as the boys can.

I had to wrestle with how little I cared about my own degree, bogged down by being financially unable to justify a switch out and no longer having a passion for the field. I wish I could say that my fire was never smothered, but it was. Thoroughly and without conscious malice.

I even envied some of the foreign students in a passive, frustrated fashion. English was their second language and if something was lost in the translation it wasn't a fault of their gender, but merely that they hadn't learned that vocabulary word yet. My failures were blamed on being female; my successes were blamed on being a fluke of my gender. When I was not feminine, I was intelligent.

There was no crossover between the floofy feminism of Women's Studies - the only view I had of Women's Studies and feminism. Convenient - and the sharp discrimination that I had to deal with on a class-by-class basis. It lurked, silently underneath the curricula and the assumption that I would treat the discipline how it was meant to be treated according to the culture established by a very small slice of tinkerer-type men. I spent my share of 3am lab nights in laughing camaraderie, always with the underlying knowledge that it was /3am/ and I was on campus and, at some point, I would need to walk home in the dark, alone.

There was no crossover. No way to explain even to people who knew about feminism that this is what was going on for me every single day that I walked into the classroom. I could share my experiences, but there were no words to describe why it was happening and no solutions but to tough it out. All the ones who made it have run the gauntlet before I did and I wanted to be one of those who made it.

In the end, I didn't quit. I gave up instead. I rejected both the box and the labels. One one side of campus, coasted through a theatre double-degree with great interest and little effort, acing most of my classes. On the other side of campus, I struggled to care in most of my CS classes and walked away with 'c's. Not as good as I could do, but about as much as I was willing to do. I began to deliberately remove myself from the path of opportunities. All of this and I am still fascinated with the concept of artificial intelligence, and natural language processing, and the zillions of ways that humans can interact with their machines. My passion, however, is now reserved for writing speculative fiction and following the development of new technology at a spectator's distance.

My boyfriend wanted to know why I went to school for something that I didn't want to do. The problem is that I did want to do it. I just didn't want to do it their way. Everything got complicated in ways that I did not know how to deal with, both because of my immaturity and the complete left-fieldness of such blatant sexism to someone oblivious like me. This starts to sound like an excuse. In a way it is an excuse, because I could be pursuing my computer-related interests right now and I am not. I also stopped caring about them years ago and once you stop caring it is hard to start again.

My conversations about sexism until this point have been swapping incidents like vets swap war stories. Beyond the stories, however, we just kind of look at each other and tentatively suggest that we can form organizations. Then we do social things, enjoy being women in CS, and generally try and give ourselves a culture to replace the one giving us so much shit. That only works so far, I'm afraid, and I want more permanent solutions that address both the structure and the culture of CS.

My ultimate goal is to find a way to educate both male and female CS students early about the language of feminism and how it can - in very practical ways - benefit everyone learning and studying one of my favorite topics, computers and technology. Being able to tell a young man, "do not disrespect me by insinuating that I'm only here because my gender was needed to fill a quota," and having him understand what I am talking about would have made my college years so much more pleasant. Education is key, in both sexism and feminism, and dispelling damaging inaccuracies benefits men just as much as it benefits women.

This isn't so much about dismantling the pervasive sexism (though it could help), as much as it is me desperately wishing that I had known and been exposed to this so that the wheels could have started turning earlier. I was a senior or a super-senior before I was ever sat down and educated about racism, and it still has taken me three or four years after finding the related subject of sexism to reach this point even though I was well-acquainted with the concept through experience. The earlier this formal introduction and education happens, the better. I want to take the work done in one field, Women's Studies, and apply it practically to the steps that STEM women are already taking.

If anyone knows how to design a class, I'd love to any advice you might be willing to give. :)

Slowly Updating

2010-03-05T15:23:00.000-08:00

It occurred to me that I had just shy of a dozen unfinished posts in my draft cache, created about one a month since December of 2008. I'll be trying to finish and post them over the next week or so.

<3

An Open Letter For a Second Chance

2010-03-05T12:32:00.000-08:00

Dear friends,

This letter is not about me. This letter is about all the people who offended you years ago, and with whom you severed ties. This letter is about people who were going through something difficult that, while it did not excuse their actions, meant that their actions were a temporary response to a greater situation. This letter is about the people who destroyed their first chance with a rocket launcher.

The price of immaturity is the loss of second chances.

I ask for your understanding and for a little forgiveness. The person who harmed you in the past has grown, changed, and is now different and yet the same as they once were. They are stronger, more aware, and more mature. They have learned from their mistakes and while they are not perfect, they have discovered you and themselves valuable. One disaster does not mean the disaster will repeat forever.

Sometimes there is no way to be friends. Sometimes there is no way to come to middle ground and start over. Sometimes you or the other person understand the world completely differently. Sometimes the disaster really will repeat forever and you must rid yourself of the toxicity.

Sometimes.

But not always.

Sometimes the cause is this: Tragedy. Depression. Misunderstanding. Uncertainty. Frustration. Abuse. Solitude. Pressure. Bullying. Living a Lie. Miscommunication. Mistakes.

These are not excuses. The behavior that harmed you cannot be excused, only taken responsibility for and rectified if possible.

But I ask for forgiveness for those with depression. I ask for forgiveness for those suffering from abuse - at their own hands or others. I ask for forgiveness for those whose circumstances leave no room for understanding how to deal with something that is eating them alive. I ask for forgiveness for those whose circumstances make their lives incomprehensible to outsiders and so they cannot receive reliable help.

The desperate flailing of the drowning can break noses and wound hearts.

I ask for forgiveness because sometimes, the way to be in other people's company can be consumed by living life. The emotions and sensitivity others demand dissolve, leaving only the sharp edges of hurt and pain for everyone else to deal with. There is nothing left for others when all of the person's power is being poured into simply surviving. When surviving or trying to fight their way to a life more honest, more truthful, less confusing, more joyful, sometimes there only way someone sees to move forward is to defend against all comers.

When a person defends themselves, the defense does not always differentiate between friends and attackers. And, then, when a mistake is made, sapped self-confidence destroys the idea of reconciliation. There's no way to say, "I'm sorry" if the wound is deep enough.

There's no way to know there's a wound if there's no feedback, and a second chance is feedback. Not everyone can offer a second chance, and not everyone should. But if you can, I implore you to try. You might be the better for it.

I just want you to remember, not all harm is caused by cruelty. At some point, it may be you desperately seeking forgiveness for the past.

Yo' Mama Jokes

2009-07-16T10:52:00.001-07:00

I hate 'Yo Mama' jokes. With a burny, fiery passion. I find them juvenile and pointless when injected into typical conversation. Horrid things designed to insult others nonsensically through the random application of negative attributes onto the woman who bore you.

I don't know many people who actually take them seriously and get offended. I don't take them seriously (I mean, really? Yo' mama so fat she has her own zipcode. Really?) I object to them on principle. There's no need to insult people at all, let alone their mothers. I'm also sure there's some sort of feminist-esque objection I could raise that would require brainstretching for me to concoct since I am not all up on the women's studies terminology. After all, I did CS and Theatre in college and was surrounded by boys who wouldn't know what feminism was if you slapped them with a fish and women so saturated by the emotional outbursts of men that I don't think their worldviews leaned towards patriarchy so much as hippy communes. So yes. Effort that I'm unwilling to expend.

Yo' mama jokes. Immature, ridiculous, and... and... oh wait...

I have a confession. A confession of pure hypocrisy. To be fair, though, I learned the song in Girl Scouts round about middleschool from the farmkids. Either that or I learned it at Biblecamp because I seem to remember actually KNOWING the music to this one.

Enjoy:

"Your mama don't wear no socks (uh huh)
I saw when she took 'em off
She threw them in the treeeeeees
Now the dogs refuse to pee!

CHORUS:
They gone, gone, gone, gone
They gone, gone, gone, gone

Your mama don't wear no socks (uh huh)
I saw when she took 'em off
She threw them in the skyyyyyyy
Now Superman refuses to fly!

CHORUS

Your mama don't wear no socks (uh huh)
I saw when she took 'em off
She threw them on the floooooooooor
Now the cockroaches moved next door!

CHORUS

Your mama don't wear no socks (uh huh)
I saw when she took 'em off.
She threw them in the siiiiiiiiink
Now the water ain't fit to drink!

CHORUS

Your mama don't wear no socks (uh huh)
I saw when she took 'em off
She threw them in the beeeeeeeed
Now poor old Pop is dead!

CHORUS (x2)

*bows* Thank you, thank you. I'm sure there were more verses, but those are the only ones I can remember.

Annnddd, ahha! Here are some examples of the song. It's interesting to see how the song permuted on its way to me learning it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWyYon0LcPI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceDvGX5QYBc

((Now I remember Princess Pat and CityGirls/CountryGirls and all the others. *sighs* I miss going to summer camp.))

Hermit Rant: Friendship Reacquisition

2009-07-10T12:20:00.000-07:00

I have a huge contrary streak that kicks in whenever people bug me to do things, pay attention to them, help them immediately, spend time with them, and generally try to guilt me into various actions. I get angry, evasive and begin to show avoidance behavior. My initial response to any request is a vehement "no" and the more someone tries to convince me, the more obstinate I become. This particular contrary streak has found its way into all corners of my life from writing essays for college, keeping my poor acne-prone face clear, being friends with fringe elements from high-school, finishing important projects properly, and volunteering emotions to friends.

As a personality trait, however, this contrary streak isn't all that bad. It provides some positive results. I finished my degree in a male-dominated field, held out for a job I would enjoy, weathered rough relationship patches with friends, have a high tolerance for hard-to-relate-to people, and I have been known to push myself physically and emotionally past my limits simply because I had to prove to myself that I could.

Additionally, I find it fun to play catch-up with old high-school friends who know what I'm talking about when I reminisce. I have been found by old friends a surprising number of times over the last year or so because of Facebook, the internet, and friends keeping in touch with friends.

Combine these and I have a dilemma. I love seeing old high school friends, even ones who haven't spoken, contacted, or otherwise been in my life for over six years. I will make time to catch up, spend time with them, and enjoy their company.

Except- I hate being bugged to continually do things with this category of people. My contrary nature kicks in and I begin to resent all manner of 'fun'. Irrationally and involuntarily, I yearn to cut off all contact. Invitations to go to parties, hiking, and other entertainments are relegated to very low priority. Communication creeps to the minimum and I have to remind myself to be patient when I get into conversations that inevitably end with a, "Do you want to _blank_ on _day_?"

These are not exactly onerous activities. Still, I resent being asked to do them and fret about the guilt in saying I'm too busy to participate. I have my weeks plotted out, more or less, and I rarely have an evening to spare and, as such, I am jealous of my free time. Regardless, I also believe that time can be found if the person in question is important enough to me. This, then, starts up the guilt that I'm a horrible person because I am unwilling to magically conjure up time to spend with someone who wants to spend time with me. The inequality in the relationship grates against me and only encourages me to distance myself. I rationalize that people cannot just drop yourself into someone else's life and expect to suddenly be bosom pals. Resentment grows.

I then begin to question myself.

* Am I being irrational or is my rationalization valid?
* Am I allergic to fun?
* Am I misanthropic because I do not want to return overtures of friendship?
* Am I resisting simply because adding a new social dynamic represents uncomfortable change?
* Am I submarining a possible close friendship on the basis of selfish inconvenience?
* Do I not have any more brainspace to archive friend-data? (It certainly feels like that, sometimes)
* Do I not respect these people because they are pursuing so strongly?
* Am I kidding myself in really finding these people interesting or am I just being polite?
* Does my reluctance stem from not considering these people to be part of my friend group?
* Am I putting up with legitimately poor behavior because I do not want to deal with the fallout of issuing a rejection?

All of these questions, however, boil down to whether or not I am justified in saying "no" or if I am a horrible person.

I do not cut off all contact immediately and retreat into hermitage with a copy of World of Warcraft, a bucket of salt-water taffy and a twenty-four pack of ginger ale for the simple fact that these people enjoy my company and I enjoy theirs. At the same time, I resent my perceptions of being pestered, pressured, and guilted into doing activities when, where, and with whom. I get frustrated and angry even when the invitations are offered in good faith and the resulting activities are fun, social, and ostensibly 'good for me'.

As my less-than-smooth face and my limp senior thesis can attest, resenting what's good for me can have long-term results. My lesson partially learned and understanding as much as I do about my contrariness, these negative results are one of the reasons I'm so willing to question myself on why I'm resisting.

Honestly, however, I just want to rant up one side of this blog and down the other. Being pestered pisses me off. It's days like this when I get all misanthropic and want to cuss at everyone who walks by. People suck, I want to be a hermit.

Bigoted? Intolerant?

2009-02-19T09:34:00.000-08:00

I was struck, hard, by one particular sentence in this article over on Witchvox. By way of explanation, I read a small, eclectic array of religious blogs, ranging from Christian, to Pagan and Wiccan, to Muslim, to athiest and others. Just because I am a Christian doesn't mean I can't appreciate the life-loving sentiments of Heartsong's Hymnal or the painful finding-yourself testimonials in the articles written by Witchvox teens. There are alot of leadership and growth and spiritual health practices that cross religious lines in eerie ways, showing that worship has borrowed from itself for so many centuries and that people are so predictable (psychohistory, anyone?) that some of the traditional trappings of religion are really the bonds formed through community. The same bonds that we have shed with the idea that they're 'religion' and religion is bad. Our communities, and our lives, are poorer for it.

Regardless of my justification - edging towards rationalization - of reading a myriad of religious blogs outside of my own practices, the article I mentioned previously struck me as bitter. The author was burned and burned hard and I have nothing but good wishes for them. Like all good articles, this one made me think. One particular sentence, however, made me think alot. I even got around to asking religious questions of those I know can handle religious discussions. The sentence that settles wrong with me on a very fundamental level is:

"Jesus is the only way, truth, and light, and no one gets to the Father but through him". Say what you want, but that is an intolerant and bigoted belief.

Let me see if I can pinpoint why this sentiment and understanding bothers me so much. Quoted here, it's slightly out of context. That's okay. I'm not really wanting to put it back in context, because the context isn't what bothered me.

No, what sits wrong with me is the underlying idea that, "I believe I'm right." is somehow intolerant. Not even doing anything about it. Just walking up to someone and saying, "I believe I'm right. I believe you're wrong." A statement, to the person who says it, of incontrovertable fact.

Tolerance, as defined by Websters, is: "a: sympathy or indulgence for beliefs or practices differing from or conflicting with one's own b: the act of allowing something"

Alright then. So I tell someone I think they're wrong. Is that me being intolerant? Or is it intolerant on the part of the person who I'm telling if they shut me down completely and get pissed off that I've 'infringed upon their rights as a human being' by telling them that I really do think they're wrong.

I don't have a right to be right. Neither do you.

It could easily cross into intolerance (and downright harassment) on my part if I insist on giving you the 'you're wrong' speech long after you've told me to knock it off. But me telling you that that's what I believe? No. No, I don't think that's intolerant.

I think I should cut this short before I go on several tangental rants about religion, but that's all my argument is. Telling someone they're wrong isn't intolerant. If it is, we're all intolerant, insensitive, and doomed to horrible existences.

One metal emoticon

2008-12-16T10:40:00.000-08:00

Today I ran across something that caught my attention and rearranged a small corner of the mind. It might not seem like much, but in this article about World of Warcraft on the topic of Arthas and his cameos (An article hilarious in its own right) I tripped over something the blogger just dropped in the middle of a sentence.

"I don’t complain too hard, ’cause, be honest, he’s fricking \m/, but the man does appear to have an awful lot of time on his hands."

The little \m/ in the sentence stands for the word 'metal' (which is how my brain interpreted it) or 'hardcore' or 'awesome' or some mixture of all three. Using the symbol, which represents throwing the horns, suddenly imbues the word with sub-meanings that incorporate bad-assery, death and destruction, coffee, and just general all-around coolness to the nth degree. It's just like saying, "That's so metal!" Only somehow more because it adds a layer of meaning by using an emoticon that invokes not only the word but all the imagery associated with it and the emoticon behind it.

Also, this is just my interpretation of the slangy pictogram. It might have completely different connotations to someone else while still getting the basic meaning of, "Hell yes!" tucked into the descriptor.

It's fascinating to see the weird spiraling evolutions that the internet comes up with. It's amazing just how large of a cross-section it would take to be able to understand even half of the references tucked into casual internet prose like references to Greek mythology that were all the rage a hundred or more years ago. I suppose it's much the same, though. If Jupiter and Juno were the shared experience in the education of a generation, then references for the elite would pepper anything written for that demographic. My shared education, to use the same terminology, ends with me smiling over quotes from Princess Bride, Hitchhiker's Guide, and Tolkien.

So, I suggest that with everyday people writing for everyday people, the language of the in-crowd incorporates the audience in a way that writing didn't necessarily used to. Theoretically, anyone can have a blog that can be read by anyone. Since everyone is encouraged to write by the presence of the internet as forum for mass expression the in-crowd is no longer just the elite taught to read and given a shared vocabulary through classical literature. I know share experiences with everyone else who knows anything about Chuck Norris, +9 ogre-slaying knives, and walruses who miss their buckets. I 'get' the references to philosophers and algorithms, but my odds of coming across them in the casual essays (What are bloggers but self-published essayists?) in my feed is slim to none. The way people write is changing and not just in a shift from formal-to-informal. It's a more subtle shift into a very personal way of narrating thoughts and ideas with a mass audience in mind.

When I write, it's my opinion in my blog with references to my experiences to explain my position. My voice is clear, my frame of reference is easily studied for bias. I throw out my view of the world and expect to find people who both agree and disagree. Eventually. The Internet can see this and pass judgement and give me instant (or not so instant) feedback. So when I exercise my shared experience within my writing, it necessarily forms a tenuous connection. I'm understood on a level above the words I choose.

I'm sure there's been eras in the past where opinions expressed where done so as personal essays with strong voice that were subsequently thrown upon the mercy of peers. However, I don't think anything in the past can rival the scope of today's written communication. The symbol \m/ is just a single example in a huge sample that someone I've never heard of and will never meet has an experience that parallels mine enough that I can understand a normally meaningless symbol and be amused. I don't think that would be possible without the shift in writing style and tone that blogging encourages or without the platform of the internet to provide the shared experience of its very own culture.

Why grad school was not for me

2008-11-20T09:24:00.000-08:00

I like to stay in touch with the extremely limited population of women in Computer Science at my alma mater, being a woman who graduated CS. Every once and a while, we do stuff together. This time, it was tea. During tea we were chattering away about academic life, since most of the people who went were students and HAVE no other life, I was struck by the different experiences that everyone else was having and the ones I was having as a member of industry. This has made me reflect on my decision to not go to grad school and instead dig for employment.

It took me 9 months to find a job. There's a story behind that, but bottom line is that I finally found one and for the last 10 months I've been happily sitting at a computer and programming.

The grad students I was talking with? They were impassioned, all fired up for their chosen disciplines and extremely intelligent. They had brains full of thoughts that will eventually translate lead to concrete advances in their fields.

Eventually.

Maybe it's just me, but I drove myself nuts in college. At the end I was jaded enough to decide that a third of my professors didn't know the first thing about teaching and another third didn't care enough about their subjects to impart anything of value. My favorite teachers were the in-the-thick-of-it teachers who had opportunities for learning coming out their ears instead of the ones with dusty theories lurking in our 'required' reading. By the time I got out of college - five years and two degrees later - I was fired up to go out and DO something with what I'd learned.

It just struck me how sheltered these thirty-something, extremely talented students were when it came to the outside world. It was like they lived in a bubble of academia and anything that didn't enter and rub up against their shins like a purring cat didn't get any notice at all. What was most terrifying was one of their comments, "Most people don't know what they want to focus on when they go to grad school." So... passion but no focus and no idea what you want to do with it? It sounds to me like they were allowing academia to babysit them until they were ready to come out of their cocoons.

Of course, I'm flaunting my immaturity here. I wouldn't have been able to hack grad school. My senior thesis was a sad display of constructive criticism laced with bitterness at the pitfalls of my own education. I went out and got a job because I wasn't impassioned enough about anything I was doing when I graduated to ever want to touch it academically ever again. I wanted a job that wasn't popping popcorn, an income that could handle car insurance and an apartment with a washing machine. Now, though, I'm seeing why I was so adverse to academia.

All the opportunities I thought I had when I graduated followed paths that my interests had diverged from long ago.

Now that I'm set loose upon the world I've found that I'm a programmer, but... that's not my life. I dream in code when there's a sticky problem that I'm obsessing over, but I just as often write short stories, design graphics for websites, and go hiking. By the time I finished schooling, I just didn't care about the direction that my education had been taking me. I had started school optimistic, but the more I'd learned the more rigid the curriculum had gotten until I wasn't even vaguely pointed in the right direction. At the time, trying again from a different angle wasn't an option. My backlash against my own education was to abandon it for the realities of business and industry.

I've moved on. I've gradually discovered over the course of the past year that while I may have a job in my field, it's not who I am. It's something I do, it's something I enjoy doing, and it's something I've decided is interesting and dynamic enough to keep my attention. But it's not my box.

I could never have gone to grad school in CS because it is an interest and not a passion. I might have been able to go for Theatre, but even with the love I have for the discipline it would have been even worse because it was a degree I took to cling to something familiar. Forcing myself to continue in either field would have placed me in a definition that I would have apathetically accepted and quietly resented without consciously acknowledging it.

Now, however, I'm seeing more realities. There's no syllabus now, nothing holding me anywhere beyond a love of where I am and who I'm with.

College was nice. Safe. It was comforting struggling towards something you knew everyone else was struggling for. There was a network of authority figures to tell you 'hey, good job' even when your good job was just waking up in the morning. That's no longer the reality I live. There's now a heady sense of independence that I would have been unable to find if I'd continued schooling immediately after graduation from CS. It's not the right choice for everyone, but it was for me.

That and it's delightful to say, "I've reached my goal, time for a new goal."

Yet Another Blog

2008-11-07T08:03:00.000-08:00

I've several of these blogs floating around, but since I'm posting more and more on Blogger, I figure I should at least have a presence here.

So. Here's my token blog. Yay. *waves tiny flag*