So my job recently took a turn for the AWESOME. I now get to write blog articles, trawl the internet for links, and post stuff to Facebook and Twitter - and get paid for it. That's pretty cool. It also means I have cash (woo!), which means I can do stuff like a pre-order signed copy of The Ocean at the End of the Lane and freak out over it and see if putting it next to a signed Terry Pratchett novel will spawn a signed Good Omens. Unfortunately, it has not as of yet.
So my life is pretty cool right now. Have a poem:
In days long past, when night was gone
Us children faced the sun;
We'd sing and play, we'd grasp the day,
and enjoy the light we'd won.
From the to now the night is nothing
but the shadow of the world,
Not a terror or a fiend
nor dangerous flag unfurled.
I remember days long past
when daylight was the goal
To survive the night, spread wings, take flight
and escape the darkness whole.
Where did the sense of terror go?
And the joy of fighting through?
Why do only children fear the dark,
What was it that we knew?
I wish that I could feel again
that fear, that fierce desire,
To know the night as children do,
and to know that inner fire.
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Friday, June 7, 2013
Dammit Jim, I'm a Musician, not a Housemaid!
First off: for the like two people who still subscribe to this blog, ask me a question in the comments and I'll answer it in its own blog post!
Secondly, it has recently been brought to my attention that I am not the most orderly of individuals. I was getting ready to head out to work for the first time at my employer's new office, when I realized I could not find my wallet anywhere. At all. I spent half an hour of the forty-five minutes I still had before there was no physical way I could get there on time looking for it, so I could drive there only semi-illegally. (In other news, I figured out basic car repair last night and replaced one of my car's headlights, because I'm too broke to pay someone else $100 plus parts to do it for me.) My wallet was eventually found underneath a pile of laundry nearly a foot high, in the pocket of the pants I'd worn two days ago, and I was left with a mere 15 minutes of getting-lost time. Luckily, I only used ten of them trying to get out of the evil pitcher-plant-like parking lot I turned into, in hopes that putting the address into my GPS would help. It did not.
But anyway, when my mother found out about said search, I'm 90% positive that her gloating 'I told you so' was psychically broadcast as far as Thanatos. What she said was merely, 'Then maybe you should clean up.'
Here's why finding the wallet was so hard:
 |
| My keyboard and desk, both in their natural state of 'hosting any object that wants a flat surface to sit on'. Beneath both lie many many books. And hey, you can see my TARDIS poster. |
 |
| The fateful pants, with the pile of laundry in the background. Also, books that my cats have flung from their shelves and part of my closet door. |
 |
| A view of under my keyboard, all the stuff on the stool and underneath it. I'm not sure how the one stack of books hasn't collapsed. And hey, my wallet! |
 |
| Just. My floor and chair and bookshelf. That white and black thing on top of the stuff in the chair? My prom dress. The grey thing on the floor? My back pack. And in the lower right corner, a another cameo of my wallet. |
Monday, June 3, 2013
Speeches are Fun
So now I'm officially done with high school. It's weird, thinking that if I didn't want to, I would never have to go to school again. Of course, in reality I still have another four years, because I don't want to be homeless/live in a box/live in my parents' basement. But still. I'm practically a legal adult, guys. In commemoration of this momentous event, and because apparently everyone who heard it liked it and because you get to read my salutatorian speech. Whee!
Good evening, ladies and gentleman. As some of you probably know, I wasn’t thrilled when I found out that the salutatorian had to give a speech too - I offered Blake five dollars to do it for me. He refused. I’ve winged most of the speeches I ever had to give, so I was nervous. I had no idea about a topic, I had no idea what anecdotes I wanted to include – nothing. I was stuck staring at a blank screen. I searched my past for something on which to base my speech – the least idea of what I might write. I thought about how my class might take anything I say on a certain topic in the light of how they view me. I thought about how I viewed my class. Then I thought about what I was doing, and I realized that I was focusing on the past. I was focusing on what we have been, rather than what we will be. And that’s what graduating is about. Right now, we’re transitioning from our past, from what we’ve done, to our future and what we are going to do.
Right now, we’re completely defined by our pasts. Most of us have been together for four years now, and we’ve all done something that people remember. We’ve probably all done something we wish everyone else would forget, too. I know that I’ve never lived down G1H1 or my Iron Curtain comment – strangely enough, Mr. V was behind both of those. We’ve had to live with stuff like our GPA, our past relationships, and others’ perceptions of us. But now, we’re moving on. We are getting a clean slate, a chance to start over. Once we leave here, we won’t be surrounded by forty-seven people who know us too well. We’ll be around new people, who judge us on our own merits, not our past. We can be the people we want to be.
Graduation is not an ending, it is a beginning. We are moving forward, to new things, new ideas, new people and places. We should not be sad at losing anything, because if we truly value something or someone, we’ll keep in touch. And no matter what, we’ll always have the memories. I don’t think any of us will ever forget Chase's bitty wanter, John's amazing hair in the musical Thirteen, and Meg’s ACL. We’ll remember Guy Levine the push-up machine, Lucas’s floor-rattling bass voice, and Bryce’s drive to win everything he does. We’ll remember Anthony and French 5’s strange obsession with Joel, Madame's husband, Jenny’s artistic abilities, and Gloria’s award-winning cows. Just because high school is finished doesn’t mean we can’t hold on to the memories. Those will be with us forever.
And the best part is that now we get to start making new memories. We are going to new places, we’ll meet new people. We’ll make the best decisions of our lives, but probably a few mistakes along the way. We’ll have our friends, we’ll have our families, and best of all, we have the world. We have the rest of our lives. We have, to quote a famous Doctor, “All of time and space; everywhere and anywhere; every star that ever was. Where do you want to start?”
Good evening, ladies and gentleman. As some of you probably know, I wasn’t thrilled when I found out that the salutatorian had to give a speech too - I offered Blake five dollars to do it for me. He refused. I’ve winged most of the speeches I ever had to give, so I was nervous. I had no idea about a topic, I had no idea what anecdotes I wanted to include – nothing. I was stuck staring at a blank screen. I searched my past for something on which to base my speech – the least idea of what I might write. I thought about how my class might take anything I say on a certain topic in the light of how they view me. I thought about how I viewed my class. Then I thought about what I was doing, and I realized that I was focusing on the past. I was focusing on what we have been, rather than what we will be. And that’s what graduating is about. Right now, we’re transitioning from our past, from what we’ve done, to our future and what we are going to do.
Right now, we’re completely defined by our pasts. Most of us have been together for four years now, and we’ve all done something that people remember. We’ve probably all done something we wish everyone else would forget, too. I know that I’ve never lived down G1H1 or my Iron Curtain comment – strangely enough, Mr. V was behind both of those. We’ve had to live with stuff like our GPA, our past relationships, and others’ perceptions of us. But now, we’re moving on. We are getting a clean slate, a chance to start over. Once we leave here, we won’t be surrounded by forty-seven people who know us too well. We’ll be around new people, who judge us on our own merits, not our past. We can be the people we want to be.
Graduation is not an ending, it is a beginning. We are moving forward, to new things, new ideas, new people and places. We should not be sad at losing anything, because if we truly value something or someone, we’ll keep in touch. And no matter what, we’ll always have the memories. I don’t think any of us will ever forget Chase's bitty wanter, John's amazing hair in the musical Thirteen, and Meg’s ACL. We’ll remember Guy Levine the push-up machine, Lucas’s floor-rattling bass voice, and Bryce’s drive to win everything he does. We’ll remember Anthony and French 5’s strange obsession with Joel, Madame's husband, Jenny’s artistic abilities, and Gloria’s award-winning cows. Just because high school is finished doesn’t mean we can’t hold on to the memories. Those will be with us forever.
And the best part is that now we get to start making new memories. We are going to new places, we’ll meet new people. We’ll make the best decisions of our lives, but probably a few mistakes along the way. We’ll have our friends, we’ll have our families, and best of all, we have the world. We have the rest of our lives. We have, to quote a famous Doctor, “All of time and space; everywhere and anywhere; every star that ever was. Where do you want to start?”
Monday, May 27, 2013
The Reason Why You Shouldn't Make Me Spend Two Hours Watching Pseudoscience and Then Make Me Write a Paper On It
So I had to watch a complete pseudoscientific turd of a movie for my religion class and then write a paper on it. I did not appreciate this. So I wrote a paper explaining its awfulness. You can watch the movie itself and judge whether it deserves the bile I spill about it here. Now I wait and see what my grade will be, because it was kind of my final.
What the Bleep Do We Know
As strongly as you appeared to enjoy this movie, Mr. C___, I disagreed with many of the concepts that it brought up. I have issues with it both philosophically and scientifically. The entire movie was so New Age that I am genuinely surprised it did not mention the healing power of crystals. It abuses the science of quantum physics and implies that we, as human beings, has control over the most basic forces of the universe, rather than being the end product of those forces.
Just as an example, one of my issues with the science of the movie is with the experiment with water crystallization. A quick Google search tells me that the scientist responsible for that study, one Masaru Emoto, has been castigated by the scientific community for failing to be properly objective and for allowing human error to influence his work. Harriet Hall, a physician who writes for the Skeptical Enquirer, wrote that it was “hard to see how anyone could mistake [the water crystallization experiment] for science.” Mr. Emoto’s peers in the scientific community report that the entire experiment was bunk and failed to be scientifically responsible in any way, yet the movie reports everything found in his study as gospel truth. It is difficult, with such a fundamental lack of responsibility, to take seriously anything else the movie says. Furthermore, the claim it makes about crime going down in DC when people meditated was false. The rates of violent crime and murder actually went up. The movie blatantly lies.
I have similar issues on the philosophical side of the movie. By confusing quantum physics with philosophy, it misrepresents both. It is one thing to posit that God is present in the movements of quantum particles – should God be truly present in the world, then She would be present in everything and therefore present in quantum motion by default. It is another thing entirely to suggest that simply by thinking positively we can affect the crystallization of water, or that by thinking really hard we can change our location in the quantum universe, or that by having some sort of revelation we can change our entire brain chemistry and no longer need such trivialities as antidepressant medication. That’s when this movie crosses the line from simply laughably wrong to both physically and philosophically dangerous. It is physically dangerous because people are prescribed anti-depressants for a reason – to assume one day simply because they are feeling better that they no longer need the medicine will result in them crashing into a depressive state again and all the difficulties that caused originally. It is philosophically dangerous because it implies that anyone who is unhappy deserves to be so, because they obviously aren’t trying hard enough. Not only is it untrue, but it is also the last thing that a depressed person needs to hear.
Finally, I have issues with the creators themselves. All three of the credited creators, William Arntz, Betsy Chasse, and Mark Vicente, are students of the Ramtha School of Enlightenment, whose founder has proudly declared ‘F*** you, Catholics!” to a cheering audience of her students. The school itself supposedly teaches its students to be able to access their latent mental abilities, including psychokinesis, telepathy, and clairvoyance. Knowing their background, it is not difficult to see the extremely strong influence that this less-than-legitimate school has had on the creators of the film, and how it has colored their worldviews, and therefore it is extremely hard to take anything they suggest seriously. I do not believe in the tenets of Scientology, despite the fact that the founder claims it was revealed to him by a higher being – I see no reason to believe the claims the followers of someone whose claim to truth is based on the exact same reasoning.
Basically, I could not stand this movie. It insulted my intelligence; it was sensationalist, and it broke the trust of the viewers by lying to them, both directly and through omission. I cannot take anything this movie claimed seriously, because the rare times something based in actual truth was mentioned, it was falsely rationalized. There was nothing admirable about it, not even cinematically. The only thing I learned was that it is possible for even the most incorrect of pseudoscience to seem convincing if portrayed correctly, and that I should therefore always research a claim before I believe it, which is honestly something I should have learned a while ago. I apologize for my wholly negative opinion of the work, Mr. C___, but the film deserves it.
Sunday, May 26, 2013
Professor Layton and the Idiot Girl
First off: I have a Tumblr now! http://www.tumblr.com/blog/stereothinker
Secondly: I'm probably going to end up spoiling this entire game, because I can and because I'm lame. Sorry.
So yesterday afternoon, probably around two or three, I ripped open a grand new 3DS game - Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask. Twenty six hours later, and about 21.5 hours of game play later, I'm done. It was everything I expect Professor Layton games to be - full of puzzles, with a convoluted plot line, and some WTF moments that led me to seriously consider finding Layton and beating him about the head with something hard. That whim was at about 3 am, and I'm pretty sure that I thought I could actually do that when I had the thought.
I love the Professor Layton series. A lot. I have all the games, and I watched the movie, because that's a thing. I have kept track of the plot through increasingly ass-pully scenarios. I have sat through cut scenes involving giant remote-controlled Ferris Wheels of Death, entire cities populated by amnesiac robots and swamp-gas-befuddled citizens, and, my personal favorites, more than one building that was really a massive robot the entire time. I spent forty-five minutes in this game in an unexpected 3rd person dungeon game, burying ancient killer robo-mummies. I can accept a lot. But from a basic, bare-bones, people-dealing-with-people basis, I didn't like the ending of this game. It was the first game in a long time that didn't make me cry at the end. Instead, I just sat there, thinking more or less simultaneously, "That's so cliche," and "THAT WAS WAY TOO EASY."
Maybe I was expecting too much, especially from a game that had Nessie's little sister battle a Transformer in the last installment, but when given a situation in which a dude goes missing for EIGHTEEN YEARS, leaving behind his best friend Henry and his girlfriend - when the best friend has feelings for the girlfriend - when said dude went missing because he fell into a massive chasm in a booby-trapped ancient buried city, hundreds of feet underground - I don't want the missing dude to get the girl. I don't want him to come out of his roaring rampage of revenge because someone gave him a good talking-to, and for everyone to forgive him instantly for trying to bury an entire, extremely full tourist city in sand and nearly succeeding. I want there to be angst. I want more than him apologizing profusely and everyone smiling and raining rainbows and puppies on him, with Henry giving him back the girl and the entire freaking city that Henry built up over the past eighteen years. Henry did all that himself, for a friend to whom he was loyal, even when he appeared to be dead. But after eighteen years - I repeat, eighteen years, he and the girlfriend should have moved on a little. I wanted at least some angst about the fact that Henry is almost undoubtedly still in love with the girlfriend and now has to give her up. Or, better yet, for the guy to realize that he has no claim on the people involved anymore and not freak out. That would have been cool too.
I think my problem is that I was looking for a good story in a game that's basically a soap opera with an effects budget and less understanding of how people work. But now I want a story, dammit.
Secondly: I'm probably going to end up spoiling this entire game, because I can and because I'm lame. Sorry.
So yesterday afternoon, probably around two or three, I ripped open a grand new 3DS game - Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask. Twenty six hours later, and about 21.5 hours of game play later, I'm done. It was everything I expect Professor Layton games to be - full of puzzles, with a convoluted plot line, and some WTF moments that led me to seriously consider finding Layton and beating him about the head with something hard. That whim was at about 3 am, and I'm pretty sure that I thought I could actually do that when I had the thought.
I love the Professor Layton series. A lot. I have all the games, and I watched the movie, because that's a thing. I have kept track of the plot through increasingly ass-pully scenarios. I have sat through cut scenes involving giant remote-controlled Ferris Wheels of Death, entire cities populated by amnesiac robots and swamp-gas-befuddled citizens, and, my personal favorites, more than one building that was really a massive robot the entire time. I spent forty-five minutes in this game in an unexpected 3rd person dungeon game, burying ancient killer robo-mummies. I can accept a lot. But from a basic, bare-bones, people-dealing-with-people basis, I didn't like the ending of this game. It was the first game in a long time that didn't make me cry at the end. Instead, I just sat there, thinking more or less simultaneously, "That's so cliche," and "THAT WAS WAY TOO EASY."
Maybe I was expecting too much, especially from a game that had Nessie's little sister battle a Transformer in the last installment, but when given a situation in which a dude goes missing for EIGHTEEN YEARS, leaving behind his best friend Henry and his girlfriend - when the best friend has feelings for the girlfriend - when said dude went missing because he fell into a massive chasm in a booby-trapped ancient buried city, hundreds of feet underground - I don't want the missing dude to get the girl. I don't want him to come out of his roaring rampage of revenge because someone gave him a good talking-to, and for everyone to forgive him instantly for trying to bury an entire, extremely full tourist city in sand and nearly succeeding. I want there to be angst. I want more than him apologizing profusely and everyone smiling and raining rainbows and puppies on him, with Henry giving him back the girl and the entire freaking city that Henry built up over the past eighteen years. Henry did all that himself, for a friend to whom he was loyal, even when he appeared to be dead. But after eighteen years - I repeat, eighteen years, he and the girlfriend should have moved on a little. I wanted at least some angst about the fact that Henry is almost undoubtedly still in love with the girlfriend and now has to give her up. Or, better yet, for the guy to realize that he has no claim on the people involved anymore and not freak out. That would have been cool too.
I think my problem is that I was looking for a good story in a game that's basically a soap opera with an effects budget and less understanding of how people work. But now I want a story, dammit.
Friday, May 24, 2013
College and stuff
I'm graduating high school in exactly one week. In one week, an entire chapter of my life will be over. Am I sad? Not really. I'm not really losing anything other than the wonderful daily experience of people not knowing how to properly walk through a hallway and the privilege of having an 'honor card' that displays, in physical form, how far the administration trusts us. (Answer: up to six infraction before you lose privileges like 'wearing jeans occasionally.') Am I happy? Not really. I've enjoyed high school, for all my complaints. Am I scared/excited/nervous? Well.
Hell yes.
I'm about to make one of the biggest changes in my life ever. I'll be moving out of my parents' house. I'll be living with one of my best friends - with someone who I choose to live with, instead of someone I'm obliged to live with. Meanwhile, three of my other best friends are moving to a college three hours away (164 miles away according to Google) and I'll see them at best once a month - less than 5% of what I'm used to. I'm going to lose the security of having 90% of my time scheduled by someone else, and gain the freedom of getting to schedule that time myself. I'm going to have to do things like pay for gas and food for myself all the time. I'm freaking out.
But I'm going to do it. I'm going to rock it. I'm going to send my friends stupid texts once a day. I'm going to enroll in classes that make me happy, that teach me. I'm going to make awesome music. And I'm going to do it on as cheaply as possible, 'cause, you know, poor college student.
Rock on.
Hell yes.
I'm about to make one of the biggest changes in my life ever. I'll be moving out of my parents' house. I'll be living with one of my best friends - with someone who I choose to live with, instead of someone I'm obliged to live with. Meanwhile, three of my other best friends are moving to a college three hours away (164 miles away according to Google) and I'll see them at best once a month - less than 5% of what I'm used to. I'm going to lose the security of having 90% of my time scheduled by someone else, and gain the freedom of getting to schedule that time myself. I'm going to have to do things like pay for gas and food for myself all the time. I'm freaking out.
But I'm going to do it. I'm going to rock it. I'm going to send my friends stupid texts once a day. I'm going to enroll in classes that make me happy, that teach me. I'm going to make awesome music. And I'm going to do it on as cheaply as possible, 'cause, you know, poor college student.
Rock on.
Monday, May 20, 2013
City
Everyone knows that the city is a strange place. Whenever visitors arrive, they stop and stare, jaws dropping like flies and eyes wide as saucers. They tell everyone they meet - be it fellow tourist or hapless native - that the place is completely different, like nowhere they've ever seen. The citizens of the city are used to this, although they pretend otherwise, and claim that every generation of outsiders is worse than the last. There is truth in their claim. The city has grown stranger as the years passed, and does so still, so that what it is now is worlds different from what it was at the beginning of the day.
Everyone knows that the city is a dark place. Which isn't to say that there is no light. The city itself is full of light, stars captured from the heavens and placed on every street corner, stranger sky-beasts glowing and pulsing in lanterns, or following children on leashes, signs flickering and calling for someone to enter. Everything in the city has light, to make up for the sky without a sun. The sun itself has not been seen in centuries - or perhaps it is seen all the time, a single star in the night sky that has yet to be captured. No one is sure anymore.
Everyone knows that the city breeds stranger people. No true denizen of the city will blink an eye at people who have extra arms, or extra eyes, or fewer fingers, than might be considered normal. (In the city, there is an average of two and a quarter eyes, eight and a half fingers fingers, and two and a third arms. Normal is relative.) No one will look twice at a person who glows brighter than the stars in their glass prisons at every corner, except perhaps to call them over so as to read a bit of news by their light. Some people have scales. Some have fur, or feathers. Some people are ten inches high. Some people are twenty feet high. The city welcomes them and creates them all, and few ever want to leave.
Everyone knows that the city is impossible. It harvests stars and constellations. (Capturing the Great Whale, which can only be seen from the star Betelgeuse, was the biggest haul ever; tales of the catch are still told, a part of the city's legend). It is an island that is only in the same place twice if you have a rooster feather in your hat and throw a pinch of salt in the air before you look for it. It exists on a planet that has been mapped, and studied, and photographed into a static oblivion, yet cannot be found by someone who doesn't know where it is. It grows and changes by itself, it seems, or by the machinations of some strange race that lives in the sewers, or by those of angels, or maybe it is an angel. Every person who's ever gone to the city with evil intent towards it, or even simply wanting to study it, wakes up in the middle of the ocean, alone, floating on a piece of drift wood. At least, the ones that are found.
Everyone knows that the city is alive. If a person manages to find a quiet spot on the street, and stands there, listening, they will eventually feel a low, slow vibration, through the soles of their feet. Not a pulse, but the rush of life beneath. The pulse is so huge and ancient and slow that there are holidays to celebrate it, every ten years when it rumbles beneath the pavement.
But no one knows the city. It is unknowable, ineffable. It is a force unto itself, a vast, living thing that ebbs and flows with the lives of the people within. It is itself, and knows itself truly.
Everyone knows that the city is a dark place. Which isn't to say that there is no light. The city itself is full of light, stars captured from the heavens and placed on every street corner, stranger sky-beasts glowing and pulsing in lanterns, or following children on leashes, signs flickering and calling for someone to enter. Everything in the city has light, to make up for the sky without a sun. The sun itself has not been seen in centuries - or perhaps it is seen all the time, a single star in the night sky that has yet to be captured. No one is sure anymore.
Everyone knows that the city breeds stranger people. No true denizen of the city will blink an eye at people who have extra arms, or extra eyes, or fewer fingers, than might be considered normal. (In the city, there is an average of two and a quarter eyes, eight and a half fingers fingers, and two and a third arms. Normal is relative.) No one will look twice at a person who glows brighter than the stars in their glass prisons at every corner, except perhaps to call them over so as to read a bit of news by their light. Some people have scales. Some have fur, or feathers. Some people are ten inches high. Some people are twenty feet high. The city welcomes them and creates them all, and few ever want to leave.
Everyone knows that the city is impossible. It harvests stars and constellations. (Capturing the Great Whale, which can only be seen from the star Betelgeuse, was the biggest haul ever; tales of the catch are still told, a part of the city's legend). It is an island that is only in the same place twice if you have a rooster feather in your hat and throw a pinch of salt in the air before you look for it. It exists on a planet that has been mapped, and studied, and photographed into a static oblivion, yet cannot be found by someone who doesn't know where it is. It grows and changes by itself, it seems, or by the machinations of some strange race that lives in the sewers, or by those of angels, or maybe it is an angel. Every person who's ever gone to the city with evil intent towards it, or even simply wanting to study it, wakes up in the middle of the ocean, alone, floating on a piece of drift wood. At least, the ones that are found.
Everyone knows that the city is alive. If a person manages to find a quiet spot on the street, and stands there, listening, they will eventually feel a low, slow vibration, through the soles of their feet. Not a pulse, but the rush of life beneath. The pulse is so huge and ancient and slow that there are holidays to celebrate it, every ten years when it rumbles beneath the pavement.
But no one knows the city. It is unknowable, ineffable. It is a force unto itself, a vast, living thing that ebbs and flows with the lives of the people within. It is itself, and knows itself truly.
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