Right, so I'm too damn lazy to do the 30 Days Meme thing. Plus there were some days they wanted you to blog about stupid things like what's in your purse. Who cares? No one. (And I don't carry a purse.)

So, instead, I'm wrapping up with a version of the Proust Questionnaire, which is marginally more interesting.


1. What is your idea of perfect happiness?

Right. So, there’s this certain moment that tends to happen in the chilly, grey, pre-dawn hours, where the only thing you can hear are the birds outside. You might be a little hungover, or waking up next to someone extraordinary, or looking forward to going to the airport, or out to breakfast, or just to your own kitchen to make that first, amazing cup of coffee. It’s this internal pause, this sense of meditative anticipation. No one’s defenses are engaged yet; everything is beautiful and nothing hurts. That's it. Right there.

( But wait! There's more! )

My first love was books.

I started reading young, somewhere around two or three years old. I can't remember the first book I read to myself, but it was probably something by Dr. Suess. The first book I do have strong memories of is The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, which my parents took turns reading it to me as I lay in their bed between them. When I got older, I was a voracious reader in school. We had a chart on the classroom wall where you got a sticker for each book you completed, and my name always had rows upon rows of stars beside it.

This is back when libraries still used card catalogs with actual cards. When one day of each school year, the school librarian would have a workshop on how to use the Dewey Decimal System to find what you were looking for in the catalog. Sometimes I would just open up a drawer, run my finger through the cards, and randomly select a book to check out. The information on those cards were typed, on a typewriter, by a human. Hundreds upon hundreds of them. Libraries are the reason why I love the smell of a well-thumbed book.

Anyway, after my third little brother was born, there was a perfect storm of bad circumstances in the family: my father started working back to back doubles on the weekends and my mother plunged into a deep and, ultimately, fatal depression. She was unable to handle caring for anyone, so she locked us in our rooms for the 48 hours my dad was gone every week. No TV, no phone, no radio, no contact with the outside world. No food. My memories are understandably hazy, so I couldn't say how long this particular example of neglect went on. Less than two years more than nine months? The years all bleed together, and none of them were all that great to begin with. Yeah, yeah: everybody's got a sad story, but that's not the point.

The point is that I developed a routine: Friday afternoons after school, I would get home and empty my backpack. Then I would walk up to the village library, and check out between 15 and 20 books. There were a lot of Nancy Drew books, a lot of Sherlock Holmes, a lot of Agatha Christie, a lot of books about whatever animal I was currently obsessed with, and a lot of Stephen King. Then, over the 48 hours of lockdown, I would read them all. Every single one.

I couldn't speak, so I read. I couldn't eat, so I read. Sometimes it was enough to forget that I was hungry. Sometimes it wasn't. In a lot of ways, living inside those narratives kept me going; the hours I was lost in someone else's life were hours I wasn't trapped in mine. But in that weekly ritual of hunger, silence, and meditation I also became supremely comfortable with being alone with myself, in the world in my head. I have an excellent vocabulary, but I'm not afraid of silence.

 Today is one of the first days of my Spring Break and I decided I'm going to do this 30 Days Blogging Meme because otherwise I'd probably never blog. I'm just too busy/distracted/uninspired/overstimulated, you name it. Plus I'm working more with pen-to-paper journaling at the moment.

I may well do more than one of these a day, though, especially now that I'm on break and am taking time for self-reflection and stuff.

( Day One: A Recent Photo and 15 Random Facts )

Husband: Which would you prefer: a male or a female therapist?

Me: I want Dr. George Huang.

Husband: *sigh*

Me: *doink! doink!*


In other news, I just downloaded Law & Order: UK because I am that much of a slut for the franchise curious.

OK, you all know by now that I don't have a TV and so I'm pretty much a pop culture hermit. I am very, very vaguely aware that Charlie Sheen is saying some weird stuff in public, possibly having some sort of manic episode or whatever. I have no idea and I don't really care.

But if you have found him amusing, I ask that you read this Op-Ed from the NYT, written by Anna Holmes. 

Charlie Sheen has a history of violence to the women in his life and is not in jail because he's rich, white, and famous. Also, because the women he has victimized are women that are less famous than Charlie Sheen, or work in the sex industry. We refer to those women as "golddiggers" and "whores" so we don't have to either think of them as, or call them, a "person." But Charlie still gets to be a person, and make $1.2 million an episode.

We really need to stop holding up men who commit violent crimes against women like they're some sort of fucking folk heroes.

☆ I've been so super-lame lately. Partly it was being distracted by some family business, but mostly it's just that the quarter is wrapping up, and I'm trying to hold onto my last shreds of sanity.

☆ That being said, I'm projecting (hoping) to end this quarter with an A and two B's. I fully realize that most people would find that acceptable. But to me, "B" just means "failed a little less shamefully." I kid. Mostly. Ok, my GPA will still be a 3.7. I checked. Believe me, I've run the numbers on the next two year's worth of classes to see how much higher I can get it.

☆ Without further ado: Disco Moth.

☆ Also this week I got annoyed at a Science Daily article about a study for the British Journal of Educational Psychology that  said girls do better at math and science when the word problems are phrased in a "feminine context" such as learning about how lasers are utilized for cosmetic surgery, or calculating the statistical likelihood of a miscarriage. I'll just repeat what I said on Facebook: "Articles like this are highly problematic because while the intent of engaging more women in STEM studies is a noble one, this sort of approach deals with and talks about women as if we were some sort of rare subspecies who's interest in STEM must be coaxed by presenting it to us in our native grunts and whistles."

Because, hey, if the data says those questions work, who am I to argue with the data? Personally, I still find it laughable, and more of a band-aid measure for students who didn't get good early education experiences with science and math. However. Treating the "male context," whatever that means, as the default normal human context from which women are a deviation is just insulting. It's frustrating that we still have to point out that women as a group are not particularly special; we're not some rare, endangered, subspecies. We're just people. No, really.

☆ On the flip side, the Smithsonian Channel is running a Women in Science series that I've honestly had not had time to watch, but the episodes are free on the website and it looks interesting. 

☆ In conclusion, sorry to be a lame internet friend. I'm going to try to catch up on life and and the flist over the next week or so, though.

☆ I'm alive.

☆ Have been spending most of my time on school work, but I'm trying to get a better balance going. Time management has never been one of my skills. Too easily distrac....

☆ Husband has been designing a D&D campaign to run this summer, and he's been looking up a lot of maps of Asia in order to work out the geography of the game and aid in the world-building. The other day, he says to me: "So, let me tell you: when you're sitting in a crowded coffee shop on a Saturday, don't Google Image Search for 'hi-res Asia' unless you've got the SafeSearch on."  Oh, that man of mine.

☆ I'm working on this "Craft Your Life" thing from The Art of Manliness. It's a three article project, and just the way the internal work is divided up just makes a lot of sense to me. You start by defining your roles, then ranking them, then writing out a few paragraphs defining each role, then making long and short term goals, etc. Then you figure out where you should live. Then you figure out who you should surround yourself with. The end result is hopefully a clear - but changeable! - map to the kind of life you want, with a little more depth than "write down where you'd like to be in five years." I get excited about things like this.

☆ And, yeah, AoM can be problematic with their heteronormative language and such, but I really dig some of their articles. And any website that posts a piece called Lessons in Manliness from Atticus Finch, and tells people that Atticus Finch is someone they can and should aspire to emulate is a place that can produce some cool things. 

☆ I have a new coffee maker. It's a Mr. Coffee in the style of Keurig, where it takes K-cups and makes individual cups of coffee. It's pretty much the most awesome thing ever. Plus, I got an accessory that will allow me to use it to make individual cups of tea with the tea I have already! The future is now, and it is highly caffeinated.

☆ I should probably get to work, huh? Yeah.

 So....who here has Tumblr? I set one up, and I've been using it for a few days now, and I love it. Since 99% of my LJ posts are just lists of small observations, and links to videos or cool things, the Tumblr format suits me for the moment. Not that I'm leaving LJ, as I still use it mainly as a way to keep up with people I like and communities in fandom and such! But I'm just no longer really writing long, wordy posts, and I haven't for some time. (Plus, Tumblr has an app that actually seems to work on my phone, which is boss.)

Do any of you have a Tumblr? How about favorite ones that you read?


In other news, not much to report. School, school, school. Student life is boring to talk about; that's why I need LJ and Tumblr, so I can read about all your doings! 

☆ Yesterday, I was Pride and Prejudiced for the first time, courtesy of madlori. (Who also fed me delicious things!) I haven't laughed so much in a long time, and now I understand why people cite Mr. Darcy as an example of an INTJ personality. The looks on his face when at the balls - all variations on: "I should like very much to launch myself out of this window" - were as funny as they were familiar. I also really loved the attention to detail in all the costumes, the hair, and the decor.

☆ One is perhaps too ardent a devotee of H.P. Lovecraft if one's philosophical ruminations of the day begin with: "What if this universe is a placebo cooked up by our feeble little brains, which were incapable of processing true reality and now are are incapable of even discerning it?" A homeopathic universe. Err, sure. Please pass the caffeine.

☆ Today's video obsession is the live performance of Peter Gabriel's "Come Talk To Me" from The Secret World: Live. G'damn. I love just everything about it: the poetic lyrics (from which I plucked the entry title), the extending and retracting phone cord, Paula Cole's outfit, Peter Gabriel's facial expressions, the judicious and rocking use of bagpipes. Le fucking sigh. 

☆ Link courtesy of neadods: there are now Watson Socks, a knitted sock pattern based on the jumper Watson wears in BBC Sherlock. Not only is this a very neat fandom thing, but the socks look fabulous and comfy. 

☆ I should get off of this thing and get to work, now. As most of the country will be glued to the sporting event of the day, I imagine it'll be pretty quiet.

☆ My phone is rather unceremoniously going through its death throes; it's currently having some sort of fit as it repeatedly tries to reboot itself, and fails, and due to no action on my part. Earlier it was emitting a screech like a fruit bat.


☆ Tomorrow, my friend madlori  is going to introduce me to Pride and Prejudice. I've never read the book. I've never seen the miniseries. (We're watching the miniseries.)  I'm excited to be exposed to, what I gather, is something of a phenomenon. (To be perfectly honest, I've never read anything by Jane Austen.)


☆ Will be doing so much homework this weekend, besides the P&P marathon. So. Much. I haven't been posting much lately because I've been pretty boring, just catching up on school. And listening to the new Decemberists album. 


☆ So I posted on Twitter that I'm thinking of doing away with my Facebook page. I just don't use it very much, and the design and layout is a terrible eyesore to my sensibilities, anyway. I hate how every video is expanded, and how links to articles are formatted as little preview squares and it's just messy. That, plus it is becoming uncomfortably huge and...sprawling. I find that I feel like I am spending more time ostensibly eavesdropping on other people's conversations than "connecting." (Whatever THAT means.) I do find it useful as a place to get invitations to gatherings, but given the fact that I have a spouse on there, and I'm not a terribly social animal to begin with, it's not a big enough draw to entice me to stay.

So what say you, LJ? What do you use Facebook for? Do you find it useful? If you have Twitter, do you use them for different things?


☆ I saw this Campari ad via bodlon 's journal the other day. Now this is what I call sexy, and it should be shared.