Sarcastic Saturday :: the oddity of getting-to-know-you questions in semi-formal situations

By semi-formal, I mean not formal-formal (a job interview/workplace scenario) but not informal (a purely social gathering of those you consider to be in one way or another your peers, and even then this requires discretion).  This is my way of describing any situation where there is a noticeable power differential between the asker and the askee, but it will not cause problems like those that appear in professional cases (i.e. someone not getting hired based on the content of their answer).  How teachers talk to students is the reason I’m thinking to discuss this tonight, but this could also apply to older relations speaking to younger ones, to a parent speaking to their child’s friend and/or something else, to many other things I just can’t think of right now.

I went looking for illegal questions for prospective employers to ask interviewees; this list is from the about.com section on job searching.

Race
Color
Sex
Religion
National origin
Birthplace
Age
Disability
Marital/family status

And it’s funny, because at least on collegiate getting-to-know-you sheets and in the related discussions, many of those things come up.  Religion, in my experience, has been thankfully left alone, and I highly doubt most of the people I’ve heard/seen ask these sorts of questions would even think to question someone’s sex-related (or sexual, but let’s get to that in a second) identity.

Race is not often discussed, either, but birthplace and therefore national origin is one of the first things that usually gets brought up in these discussions.  “Say your name, what your major is, and where you’re from” is the standard introductory paragraph.  I understand name, so we know what to call each other, and major, so we know who’s studying what and why they’re taking the class, perhaps, but I’ve never really known why location of origin is a requirement?  I know that for some people, hometown and home state and home country are big parts of their identity, and that’s totally cool: pride in where you’re from, if you have it, is rad.  But for some people, myself included, I have never personally defined myself by location, and I’m not really sure what it matters.  If you want to bring it up, cool, but it seems odd to force it.  (I’ve had professors who will ask students from vastly different geographic locations how things of whatever nature are done in their region, and ask this repeatedly: I’m sure they mean nothing by it, but it always makes me cringe.)

Age and disability are things that aren’t usually specifically discussed, but they show up on the papers a lot.  Age, well, okay, I get at least that professors are trying to get a cross-section of what grades their students are in and whatnot (though it’s often a more loaded question, as at some universities and things students are not necessarily on the traditional four-year plan).  Disability, well, okay, making sure that students are appropriately accommodated.  Reasonable, though a discussion where everyone could hear would be awful.

The one I’m bothered by, though, is marital/family status.  I personally attend a university where a lot of the students are married, so I can understand why a professor would idly think to sort out the demographics.  Life experiences, perhaps, affecting students’ perceptions of things.  But see, it’s just… not anyone’s business.  I mentioned this on my tumblr earlier this week, because one of my professors made everyone state their marital status in introductions and it made me very uncomfortable.  (And it had to be specifically marital status: it was Spanish class, and apparently in Spanish, you’re single unless you have a ring.  This was my teacher’s statement.)  I asked multiple people was it odd that I felt uncomfortable afterward, people from multiple demographics, just to get an idea of whether or not I was overreacting because I am loathe to discuss my personal life at school to any degree (the closest I have gotten to a personal declaration at school is “yes, I am a feminist” — I don’t usually even bring up specific books that I read recreationally unless I’m talking to someone as a friend-type person).

Person one: “Not odd that you would feel that way.” (that way, as in uncomfortable)

Person two: “That is NOT odd in the slightest.”

Person three: “You should have just said ‘I’m actually in a polyamorous relationship with five men and ten women, and we all live in an apartment complex together.’”

As this was a first-year Spanish class, I definitely would not have had the time to figure out how to say that; I also, though I hate to admit it, am not actually sassy enough to troll my professor like that.  (Other responses I thought of were “no, I’m single and happy with it,” something snarky about sociological reasons I don’t believe in marriage [which I didn't have sorted out specifically, because it's not that I don't believe in it 100% of the time, I just don't really dig a lot of the ceremonial/sociological things surrounding it too much] and “yes, I am married to my axe” a la Asha Greyjoy.)  But anyway, this brings up why this question bothered me so much: I cannot abide by trying to compartmentalize people.  Single/married, and of course this only applies to traditional definitions of married: boys would be married to girls or nothing at all, girls would be married to boys or nothing at all.

Oh, and what’s even more awkward is that after almost every “I’m single” came a wink-wink “boys/girls (usually boys since the class is mostly girls), this boy/girl is siiiingle~”  Well, no wonder I don’t want to share, I don’t want my life choices/circumstances judged by an adult who I’m sure is a lovely person and meant nothing by this at all, but who I don’t know very well.  I don’t want my life choices/circumstances judged by anyone, really.  Especially not in a nudge-nudge “hey, boys, clearly one of you can snap this girl up because she will want to be snapped up/because people need to be snapped up overall” way.  If someone wants to bring up that they are married or single or have a family or don’t in the context of a discussion, cool!  That’s great for them, it might be a part of their identity.  But it doesn’t have to be.  A person is not just the sum of their circumstances, they are their circumstances and their thoughts and the lessons they have learned in life and whatever the hell else they want to be.

I guess the point of this whole giant quasi-essay is that if you shouldn’t ask the question of someone on a job interview, you shouldn’t ask it of someone, period, unless you know each other well and are in social situations, maybe.  It just seems like straightforward logic.

–your fangirl heroine.

Television Tuesday :: rhetorical concepts with help from the women of Game of Thrones!

No, seriously.

Not this last weekend but the one before it, I was writing a midterm for my rhetoric class, and one of the essay prompts was (not verbatim, but essentially) “write about how concepts from this class can be illustrated by something from your life.”  Prior essays on this topic had apparently been written about students’ athletic team experiences, their volunteering in other countries, their dealing with their families, etcetera.  I had an absolutely brilliant idea for my essay immediately, and about a second after getting that idea, I sighed because I knew I couldn’t get away with writing an essay on how rhetoric can be applied to the taking back of the Seven Kingdoms.

I was very sad about this; because this is where I’m living right now for a whole variety of reasons, I had already been applying many of the concepts, if abstractly, to Game of Thrones.  (Somewhat to the books too, but as it’s somehow easier for me to apply rhetorical to something I can see characters doing, and because I’m sure there are people who watch the show but don’t read the books and I don’t want to spoil the books for those who intend to read them to catch up with the show and also I haven’t read past A Storm of Swords yet so I don’t want to get into things for fear of contradicting already-existing material but I feel okay discussing what’s happened on the show since the end of season two aired last year and that’s as far as anyone can know yet so I won’t be contradicting already-existing show material at least, I’m talking about it tonight.)  I’d have written that entire essay for my professor from Dany’s point of view, probably, because it was asking for a first-person narrative for the essay and hers is the voice that’s easiest for me to imitate and because at least so far she’s been the woman character (because it’s hard for me to write from the point of view of men, it just is) most specifically working to take back the Seven Kingdoms (Cersei already has them to whatever extent, Margaery was all “I want to be the queen” but hasn’t yet done a lot but get betrothed in order to do so, Sansa darling is just trying to survive, etcetera).  Taking back requires more active rhetoric, or anyway that’s what I suppose my logic was.

But then my professor started comparing some concept about what defines the perspective of an audience member to a situation where one male character on Glee was sexually attracted to Quinn, but couldn’t sleep with her because of his religious beliefs.  (It was something that happened in season three, so I’d already stopped watching and have no frame of reference for who the male character is/was; I also find it amusing that of all of the examples in the entire world of fiction that have one character wanting to sleep with another but not being able to because of some moral constraint, this was the one he chose.)  He also regularly ties rhetorical concepts to the first-person shooter game that he plays and today declared that sometimes it’s fun and useful to compare academic concepts to silly fictional things.

Well, of course, so why didn’t you say so on the midterm?  (I’m now hoping fervently for this to be an aspect of the final.)

Anyway, this is a very long setup.  Also, I feel like I should do this, lest I offend some ace rhetorician with my ignorance, but I’m basing my discussions of these rhetorical concepts on what my teacher has so far taught and what we have discussed in class.  We’ve done a lot of readings by rhetoricians, and I’ve paid attention to them, but I just want everyone to be aware that this is still fallible and I know that.

On the first day of class that wasn’t used to discuss the syllabus, we had rhetoric as a concept defined for us: our professor gave us definitions by Aristotle (“the faculty of discovering in any given situation all of the available means of persuasion,” according to my notes) and Kenneth Burke, a rhetorician (“symbolic action… the negotiation of the terms of our individual and collective identities”).  A discussion was also had amongst the students about how rhetoric is often associated with political lies.  I am not a student of politics in the real world sense, but political lies pinged my fiction radar pretty immediately (I was also tempted to write some sort of essay from the point of view of my Nora, but that’s not relevant to this discussion, so that’s all I’ll say of it).

And doesn’t “discovering in any given situation all of the available means of persuasion” sound exactly like Cersei?  It’s a nicer version of the instruction she gives Sansa during 2×09, “Blackwater”: “Tears aren’t a woman’s only weapon. The best one’s between your legs.”  Because Cersei is kind of a Westerosi femme fatale in a way, yes.  But she’s also a schemer in ways that aren’t (inherently) sexual.  Case in point, 2×01, “The North Remembers”: the “power is power” diatribe with Baelish.  Case in point, she at least attempts to rule for her son.  Case in point, the thousands of different ways in which she manipulates people, with her words and her schemes in most cases.  She is often the image of the lying political rhetorician.

“The negotiation of the terms of our individual and collective identities”?  That’s all of them, every single one, but Sansa and Arya illustrate this quite neatly.  Both of the Stark girls have to deal with the terms of their identities, as individuals (Sansa’s attempts to fit in in King’s Landing and then not die in King’s Landing, Arya’s difficulties fitting in in King’s Landing and then attempts to not die in her escape from it) and as part of a collective (their roles as Starks, their roles as sisters, their roles as daughters of a nobleman, Sansa’s role as a proper court lady and the prince-then-king’s betrothed, Arya’s role as a runaway orphan boy and then all of the variants).  There is contradiction (as Arya’s sister, Sansa ought to take her side, but as Joffrey’s betrothed, as the betrothed of royalty, Sansa is almost required to take his side) and questionable definition (which of Arya’s different roles is she playing today?) and all manner of other “negotiations.”

One of the first essays we read in class was Fulkerson’s “Inventing the University,” where he claims that to write an academic essay is to invent the university, essentially to negotiate those terms as above and to define themselves and what they do through those who might be reading the piece they write.  A more recent piece, Ong’s “The Writer’s Audience is Always a Fiction,” looks at a similar concept, as the title proves.  When a writer writes, they must to a certain degree imagine the role of those who partake of their material: they cast readers in certain roles and change their writing accordingly.  Nothing surprising about this, it’s human nature to change how you relate based on who you relate to.  Let’s talk about Catelyn: even the most stern or emotionally charged discussion that she had with Ned (re: Bran’s being old enough to see an execution, re: Ned going to King’s Landing) is different from arguments she’s had with Jaime or Tyrion, for example.  Both Lannisters were cast in her mind as enemies (with reason), and she’s dealt with them as such.

In the middle of a page of my notes, the phrase “there is no game outside of the people who play it” is written.  I’m just going to leave that here for obvious reasons.

Later articles we read dealt with the notion of agency, defined in my notes as “the ability to get something done.”  In rhetoric and in many things, this often translates to the ability to get one’s voice heard.  And I think it’s with this topic that I’m going to talk about my khaleesi, because hers has been a story of acquiring agency.  In her first scenes, she is sold in marriage to a stranger, sold by her brother; he says some terrible things that I won’t even copypaste here because they make me so mad about how he’ll use her in any way he has to in order to get what he wants.  He has made her believe that she is worth nothing more than what he says.  In her first scenes, Dany has no agency.  Then she acclimatizes, she connects emotionally to her husband the khal and as such gains a sort of power.  (Insert first assertive monologue.)  She stands up to her brother, negating his negations of her agency, and she speaks out against the men of the khalasar who are opposed to that agency.  When her husband is dead and the khalasar is disbanded, she grants agency of a sort to those who remain with her: they are no longer slaves, no longer anything they do no want to be.  She will protect them, but they are free.  (Granting agency seems to be a thing of Dany’s, perhaps because she once did not have it and cannot abide by that now that she has enough power to change it.)

Oh, and let’s talk about the rhetorical aspects of the assertive monologues, because they do serve a purpose and I will defend them forever.  Another concept discussed in my rhetoric class is articulation, which is defined in my notes as “a struggle to fix meaning and temporarily fix reality.”  The assertive monologues are delivered to those who would try to rob her of her agency (her brother, the council of Qarth) and to those who she is trying to assure of her agency (her makeshift khalasar).  They are her way of placing herself in that moment, her way both of assuring herself and assuring others, her way of telling those who would doubt her that she is placed in that moment in such a way and she will not be deterred.  Dany is a badass (all of these women are) and she does have dragons, but she is not really a physical fighter.  She has dragons, but she also has her ideas and convictions.  Strategy and tactics.

I turn the page in my notes and find a discussion of another article on agency, but what is most interesting to me is the bullet point “the fact that decisions are made is important.”  And that right there is Ygritte and the wildlings.  They are wild because they choose to live free beyond the walls, because they choose to make choices.  Their way of life is that of having agency, period.  They speak disdainfully of the “kneelers,” those who bend to the will of kings, and their own leader, though called the “King-Beyond-The-Wall,” is not beholden to traditional monarchic structures or traditions.  Ygritte seems eager to disturb Jon’s routine, because in her eyes it is more important to make choices than to follow, and she talks about this quite often.

Perhaps when the term is over and I have more notes, I’ll write more of this.

–your fangirl heroine.

Whedon Wednesday :: syntax and semantics with help from Firefly!

I say “with help from” because really, this is just me studying for a linguistics test by shamelessly replacing the sentences in my textbook (Language Its Structure and Use by Edward Finnegan, sixth edition) with ones that refer to events on Firefly.  Because I study best by applying the concepts to things I give a damn about.  (I enjoy linguistics, but I don’t care about the runner from Butte winning a prize at the fair.)  Also, I think it’s somewhat humorous to use Firefly, which is so grammatically… whimsical, let’s say, to discuss grammatical concepts.

This is not every concept, obviously, but here are some selections from chapters five and six of that textbook.

• Noun phrases are phrases that involve nouns, that could be substituted by other nouns like “it,” “they,” “he,” or “she.”  They can be as involved as you want.
  Ex. the captain with tight pants.
• Verb phrases are phrases that involve verbs, that could be substituted by other verb phrases.
  Ex. punched the douchenozzle.

• A sentence’s subject “is defined as the NP that is immediately dominated by S.”
  Ex. River.
  A sentence’s predicate modifies the subject.
  A direct object “is defined as an NP that is immediately dominated by the VP.”
  Ex. the gun.
  An indirect object is, well, that.
  Ex. a lackey.
  An oblique “is the term for NPs that are not subject, object, or indirect object; in English, an oblique is realized as the object of a preposition.”
  Ex. a rifle.

River (sub.) shot (predicate) the gun (direct object) at a lackey (indirect object) who held a rifle.

• Recursion is “the ability of a sentence to incorporate another sentence that in turn could incorporate still another one, and so on.”  Use of complementizers.
  Ex. The fluffy dress was in the window.
  Mal bought Kaylee the fluffy dress.
  Mal bought Kaylee the fluffy dress that was in the window.

• Structural ambiguity is when “the linear string [of words] has two possible internal organizations – and therefore two readings or interpretations.”
  Ex. Jayne sexed [a whore at Nandi's.] 
  Jayne sexed [a whore] [at Nandi's.]

Jayne sexed one of the whores in Nandi’s employ in the first sentence; Jayne sexed a whore inside Nandi’s building in the second.  (In this case, they’re both true, but they technically mean different things.)

• Surface structures are “constituent structures within the linear string of words in a sentence.”  Underlying structures are then how we account for implicit knowledge.
  Ex. Mal kissed Saffron, but Wash didn’t.

We can assume in this case that didn’t means didn’t kiss Saffron, but that’s the underlying structure.  We assume it, and that’s proof of our grammatical competence.

• Yes/no questions “can be answered with a reply of yes or no” and apply to some sentences.
  Ex. Shepherd Book had Alliance ties.
  Did Shepherd Book have Alliance ties?

• Information questions can also be applied and can be answered with a WH-word.
  Ex. Inara is entertaining a lady client.
  Inara is entertaining who?

• Referential meaning is a type of linguistic meaning.
  Ex. Simon Tam, Simon’s medical kit.

The referential meaning of Simon Tam is the person who goes by that name.  The phrase Simon’s medical kit refers to the medical supply bag belonging to Simon.  This can be said to be the referential meaning of the linguistic expression Simon’s medical kit, and the medical kit that is identified is its referent.  This is only an efficient tool for recognizing things sometimes.

SEMANTIC FIELDS

• Hyponymy: compression coil, catalyzer, and enhanced graviton accelerator core are all hyponyms of engine parts.
• Meronymy (part/whole): Londinium, Sihnon, Ariel, and Osiris are all part of the whole that is Core planets.
• Synonymy: sexing someone (or getting sexed), being with someone, and rutting are all ways of describing having sexual relations, but differ in social and affective meaning.
• Antonymy: Independent/Alliance are here antonyms, as are immoral/moral.  The latter is a gradable pair, because the words have superlative and comparative forms; petty thieving is more immoral than earning money honestly, but more moral than essentially killing an entire planet; the former is nongradable.  One cannot be the other.
• Converseness: if Wash is the husband of Zoe, then Zoe is the wife of Wash.  Wife is the converse of husband.
• Polysemy: the word shiny can have several related meanings, including bright, glossy, lustrous, silken (all standard English) and good, favorable (‘Verse slang), and the word companion can have several related meanings, including friend, associate, helper (all standard English) and fancy, refined sex worker [somewhat like a geisha] (‘Verse slang).
• Metaphors: I am a leaf on the wind.

DEIXIS

• Personal: I will not be servicing any of your crew.
• Spatial: He tried to sell Mal this ship, but Mal was interested in that one.
• Temporal: Goin’ on a year now, I ain’t had nothin’ ‘twixt my nethers weren’t run on batteries.

SEMANTIC ROLES

• Agent: The operative killed Mr. Universe.
• Patient: Mr. Universe was killed.
• Instrument: Mr. Universe was killed with a sword.
• Cause: The cloud shielded the Reavers from view.
• Experiencer: Mal heard Mr. Universe’s transmission.
• Benefactive: River killed the Reavers for her injured crew.
• Recipient: The ‘Verse saw Dr. Caron’s transmission on the cortex.
• Locative: Mr. Universe’s moon was the location of a bloody battle.
• Temporal: Mr. Universe was killed before the crew arrived.

…yes.  Best as I can gather from my book, that’s that.

–your fangirl heroine.

Sarcastic Saturday :: this is the time and place for my mini-rant about punctuation.

Which I will begin with a joke my friend told me and the story surrounding it.  It’s cute, but it leads to a good point about me and punctuation.

The joke is, what’s the difference between a cat and a comma?  A cat has claws in its paws and a comma has a pause after its clause.  Being the fun-sucker I am (my dad declared me “where cute jokes go to die”) my response (and she sent it to me in a text, which is no excuse, but without tone of voice jokes lose something; I don’t remember, but I’m thinking either I was super fun-sucked from spending the day in a room full of old people reading newspapers in silence or possibly assuming that it had been a captcha typo) to this was, a cat has three letters and a “t” and a comma has five letters and two “m”s and an “o,” though both have a “c” and an “a”?

I know, I know.  Laugh at my complete robotic inability to appreciate humor.

My dad, upon hearing that I’d created a non-punchline but before hearing what it was, asked if I’d been analyzing the grammar and punctuation of the joke.  (No, because aside from not consistently capitalizing beginnings of sentences, which I understand because texting is like that sometimes, my friend has good grammar and punctuation.  [Yes, băobĕi, I clarified that just 'cause I know you'd read it.])  But he had a legitimate point; I have always had issues with improper punctuation, though as I’ve gotten older it’s become actually physically painful to deal with.

I saw a sign today outside of a fast food restaurant that read “blah blah milkshake blah its blah blah blah” (I don’t commit the exact texts of signs to memory, even short-term, but it was something about a milkshake, I think).  I immediately interrupted whatever thought I was babbling on about to declare, “That sign is missing an apostrophe.”   When noises of curiosity were made by my fellow passengers, I continued on.  “The ‘its’ there isn’t actually plural an it in plural form.  It should be it apostrophe s, as in abbreviated it is.”  I am a fan of the abbreviated it is, as despite my fondness for grammar I can (as previously mentioned) slip into colloquial slangy-as-hell Firefly grammar, and there’s nothing doesn’t get abbreviated there.  (Or, as in the case of that sentence, words like “that” just get dropped all together.)

Case in point.  I am a stickler for punctuation, and I believe that it isn’t difficult to use correctly.  They teach you in grade school how to use commas, for Christ’s sake.  Yet the problem I saw the most while proofreading (and I did a lot of proofreading in school; even kids that didn’t really like me liked to use me for that ’cause they knew I could spell) aside from stupid spelling errors and, well, mundane ideas, was poor comma use.  For some reason a vast percentage of the population just, punctuates sentences like, this and throws commas, every which way.  Or sometimes they don’t use any at all even when they’re using multiple thoughts joined together and the thoughts have very little in common penguins are cute.

I’m not saying I judge people personally for not using punctuation correctly.  But I do judge people’s attentiveness in school and their ability to retain information.  Because, really.  Though I honestly don’t remember my teachers spending too much time discussing punctuation in high school or beyond; maybe it’s something that teachers need to be more wary of.  In the real world, nobody will care about what you thought when you read Huckleberry Finn or even Hamlet (though you should read Hamlet anyway).  But prospective employers should care about if you can use proper grammar.  Especially when typing, when nowadays we live in the land of the squiggly green and red lines.  It tells you if you’re messing up.  Listen.

–your fangirl heroine.

Things in Print Thursday :: a pop-cultural English major’s lament, in haiku

Just because it’s new
Or on the television
Doesn’t mean it’s crap

Film and comic books
Are literature also
Please don’t be a snob

And because it’s old
Or in fancy rhyming verse
Doesn’t mean it’s good

You’re on a high horse
Or talking out of your ass
So damn pretentious

Please shut the hell up
You give our kind a bad name
I don’t care for you.

–your fangirl heroine.

Whedon Wednesday :: the philosophy of Dollhouse

A further rant may later be had, but this is a point-by-point dissection of every term that was on my philosophy final exam review sheet in Dollhouse terms.  Because it helped me study, and it’s remarkable how true it is.

Solipsism: only what is inside of your own mind exists.  Wherein one is reduced to what my teacher described (unknowing of the fortuitous phrasing for my own nerd purposes) as a “brain in a vat,” where one’s entire reality is what goes on in one’s brain.  What you imagine, what you feel; there is no physical reality, just perception.  In short?  The Attic, wherein one is reduced to a brain hooked up with wires to a super-processor and inside of said brain made to experience one’s greatest fears and imagined scenarios.

Metaphysics: the philosophy of being, knowing, substance, cause, identity, time, and space.  Abstract theory or talk with no basis in reality.  Metaphysically, Clyde Ambrose envisioned what Rossum was capable of doing.  Unfortunately for him, it was able to be a more literal reality.

Primary qualities: measurable, undoubtable facts.  Quantities, numerical facts.  Swimming ten laps in the pool.

Secondary qualities: opinions, subjective facts.  Massages are relaxing and one is or is not their best.

Epistemology: essentially, believing that your opinions about something are true.  The study of knowledge.  Paul Ballard believing that yes, what the Dollhouse does is wrong.  Removing people’s brains (interestingly, he goes sort of Descartes and says “souls” a couple of times) and making them into fancy assassins and/or prostitutes and/or whatever else you might need is wrong, dammit.  He says so, with his tall, morally judgmental self.

Monism: believing there is only one reality, either the mental or the physical or the spiritual or the… whatever.  Solipsism is monism.  So is materialism.  So is choosing to believe that, dammit, I feel like a person who exists.  That means I will be a person who exists, boom, done.  Paul and Mellie pre-exploding doom.

Dualism: believing that multiple realities can coexist.  In a nutshell, Echo.  A fully realized reality in the form of a person can exist with multiple pieces and fragments of reality going into it.

Ontology: discerning the nature of this reality, basically.  Ontology is discovering that, well, crap, this technology does exist, people can erase someone’s brain, and adjusting your perception of what reality is accordingly.

Materialism: is really just irrelevant, because it disregards the brain entirely.  And I have no patience for disregarding neuroscience.

Skepticism: does that really exist?  Is that really the case?  Ballard, is there really a place in the ground where people’s brains get erased?  Do you really want to lose your job over what may or may not really exist?

Foundationalism: all things are provably true or so fundamentally true they don’t need to be proven.  Insert neurogeeky tl;dr here, if you’d like.

A priori: making judgments on something before the fact and without direct experience.  A priori knowledge is what happens when there has never been a composite event before, so nobody tries to premeditatively prevent it.  Why would it?  So Alpha’s allowed to continue to function, and then everything gets dumped in him by accident and wackiness ensues.

A posteriori: what happens when Echo starts to composite.  Everyone sort of already knows what could happen and it’s bad, so Dominic is going Hey we should do something maybe, but then Adelle’s going Well, it could work out, and besides I want to see what happens and Boyd is secretly going Mwahahahaha evil plans falling into place that I won’t reveal for another season and wackiness ensues.

Direct realism: the opposite of solipsism.  Seeing somethin in front of you and believing it’s real based on your ability to recognize its existence.  Direct realism is why Paul doesn’t think to doubt that Mellie is real, because she’s right in front of him, so she must be.

Indirect realism: sort of like that but not; everything is a neural image of something real.  Adelle’s pouring her clients alcoholic beverages and going We can create you the reality of your choosing, it will for all intents and purposes be real, even if it’s not technically, so pay us exorbitant sums of money and screw someone’s brains out, please.

Epistemological idealism: believing that yes, we have ideas, and yes, they’re real in our minds.  Echo’s trying to convince Paul that even though she may not have originally been comprised of dozens of people living inside one brain and body, she’s real enough to know she wants to kiss him.

Metaphysical idealism: sort of like solipsism but not.  The brain isn’t the only thing there is in this world, but it’s the basis of things.  Mellie believes that she’s a real person, she has no reason to doubt it, because why would she?  Echo knows that she’s real, even if she’s comprised of a bunch of different brains.  She’s her own reality.

Positivism: well, up yours, Descartes, there’s no soul.  Or if there is it’s not the scientific basis of… well, anything.  What cannot be proven scientifically, logically, or mathematically is not real.  Positivism has its ups and downs; there’s proof that the world will probably end because of this tech.  Percentage-related proof, even.  Also, the law makes sense because it’s logical, even though sometimes it’s not logical because some company engineers a senator and then hacks into the government and destroys civilization as we know it and everything goes to hell.  Then your own moral code is acceptable.

–your fangirl heroine.

Sundry Sunday :: my urban dictionary: examsperation

Def.: like exasperation, but regarding exams.

Usage: Studying for my philosophy final has me in a severe state of examsperation.

 

–your fangirl heroine.

Sundry Sunday :: my urban dictionary: incepticism

Def.: being skeptical about the nature of one’s reality as related to one’s dreams; being skeptical that someone is messing with your reality and/or dreams.

Usage: Though he did not know it, the way my philosophy teacher was describing dreams and reality sort of sounded as if he was experiencing a bit of incepticism.

–your fangirl heroine.

Things in Print Thursday :: why I like fiction better than poetry

“Poetry is the black hole of literature,” one of my professors says often.  I couldn’t agree more.  While I’m fairly sure she means it as a compliment, I view it as one of those two-sided comments, one that is both good and bad.  And this?  This is because I’m a terrible English major and really never read poetry in my spare time and rarely enjoy reading it, ever.  This isn’t just because I haven’t read any since high school and I’m out of practice, this is just because I sort of have a weird thing of enjoying plots and characters and function over form.

Poetry can have all of those things!  you’re arguing.  Well, yes, but particularly modern poetry tends to sacrifice meaning for looking avant-garde on the page.  I can’t stand that.  It’s taking the joy of reading out, it’s making you focus too much on trivialities.

Songs are potry! you argue.  But songs, good songs anyway, are good poetry.  Nobody writes songs where there’s three and a half measures between one lyric, seven measures between another, just to be hip.  And some poetry, particularly older poetry, does read like a song.  An esoteric, tediously romantic song, sometimes, but still.

I think I’m also biased against poetry because I’ve got too many bad memories of high school creative writing class.  My teacher always used to tease me about the fact that I was incapable of writing poetry about myself that wasn’t about myself as a child.  This?  This is because I remembered all too well my awful self-indulgent poetry phase of thirteen years, where I wrote angsty rhyming verses about nothing and thought I was sooooo deep.  Maybe when I’m an adult I’ll be able to write poetry, but I haven’t lived long enough, I haven’t livedenough period, to have something worthy of writing verse about in my past.  And sure, not all poetry has to be about yourself.  But in high school creative writing class, it is, and that’s just tainted me.

I honestly think the last poem I read was the Moritat found in the prologue to the original play of Spring’s Awakening.  I don’t know if it counts.  But I still have a bit of it memorized after four years, so that’s got to.  I was about to write out the bit I’ve still got committed to memory, but then I remembered it’s sort of crude.  (I refuse to believe that that’s why I remember it.  I may have a dirty mind, but not that dirty of one.  More likely, it’s because my friend and I used to chant it at each other while doing history homework and giggle.  Mature, we were.)

And then there’s the matter of my being, despite excessively fantastical, hardly romantic, in the romance sense or the literary sense.  (Closer to the literary, but.)  I’m just… too cynical to swallow love poems most days.  I accept that this is my own failing and not poetry’s itself.  I’m not sure what it says about me that I’d rather read about the gory killing of a zombie or something than someone’s epic tale of romance, but that fact stands.  There’s just so little quirky romance in poetry, and quirky romance is the only sort I can handle.

I don’t know.  I’m not anti-poetry full stop.  But I’m definitely just… sigh.  Skeptical.

–your fangirl heroine.

Sundry Sunday :: Top 10 ways I know I’m a tiny bit neurotic

Slash a grammar Nazi.  Slash weirdly organized and compulsive regarding very specific things, often pertaining to coordination.

 

10. I cannot wear shades of brown and black on my body at the same time and cringe when I see it elsewhere.
There are, I suppose, a couple of exceptions to this rule.  One skirt I have is black with a floral print that includes some brown, but it’s light brown, bronze almost.  And I allow black/brown combinations in steampunk getups, too.  Although then it is also more black/bronze than anything else.

9. I spell/grammar check the service bulletin at my church.
Or any other handout I ever see, ever, but those I only do mentally.  At church I get out my pencil and actually write in corrections, largely comma fixes and capitalization fixes.  (Whoever writes that bulletin capitalizes like Winnie-the-Pooh, and therefore almost Everything is Very important.)

8. When writing on the whiteboard, I have to double-check there are no remaining marks.
True facts, I did this in my IPA class the other day.  The teacher had erased what had last been written, but not thoroughly enough and there were some lines left over.  Before I wrote my IPA translation, I took the eraser and scrubbed the entire rectangle, not just the piece I’d be using.  My teacher then called me out on it, not meanly, just amused.  But other students in the class approved.

7. I spell/grammar check commercials and ads.
Rarely does an ad feature misspelling, as they’re largely verbal.  I did once see a misspelled HGTV ad, and was pleased to see that the next day it had been corrected.  But every time a commercial doesn’t make grammatical sense, I feel compelled to shout out the proper phrasing.  Regardless of what’s going on around me.

6.  I count how many girls I see wearing skirts on campus every day.
(Not counting myself, as I have not worn a pair of pants outside of the gym since summer, not counting my teddy bear pants.  Jeans haven’t touched my skin since March.)  This is not because I disapprove of girls wearing pants by any means.  I just became too curious to not count; initially I was only going to do it for a day or two, but once I’d wired my brain to count skirts, I couldn’t stop.  Mostly, it’s just to reinforce that I’ve figured that every time I’m walking around campus, my inner Joan Holloway weeps.  I see girls wearing pants and looking put-together, but so often I see people wandering around in sweats and North Face jackets, looking like they just rolled out of bed.  I’ve never seen more than five people wearing skirts in one day.  Skirts do not count to my tally if they’re miniskirts that barely cover the butt worn with leggings and Ugg boots.  Skirts worn by Orthodox girls go to a different tally.  This is not to judge those not wearing skirts.  It’s just a strange compulsion now.

5. I have to keep my drawing pens in rainbow order.
This has been a habit of mine since childhood.  Whether it be markers, colored pencils, or my current set of Staedtlers, if the drawing utensils come in a package that can be routinely ordered (i.e. skinny enough boxes like this), I have to keep them in sequential rainbow order.  This is both because I am neurotic and because that way I can find the color I want with greater ease.  I will admit that my Staedtlers start the rainbow at yellow and work to green, but this is because of the brown/gray/black markers that need to appear at the end of the line as they aren’t properly rainbow.

4. I routinely rearrange the fridge magnets.
And when I do this, I make sure that not only are the magnets parallel/perpendicular to each other, I make sure that they’re parallel/perpendicular to the fridge door itself.  I call the system I use organized chaos, as the magnets aren’t arranged in a particular pattern beyond what fits where (well, and my favorite ones are closer to the top, usually).

3. I grammar check television programs and movies.
Mind you, this doesn’t always apply.  I fully understand that period shows like Deadwood and shows with their own idiosyncratic patois like Firefly cannot be judged in terms of what is currently considered “proper” grammar.  (And I fully admit that after I’ve been watching these shows I will unintentionally slip into said patois, dropping g’s and tossing in the occasional “ain’t” and in the case of Firefly swearing like a Chinese sailor.)  But when the program is set in current day, or if it is a reality program or otherwise unscripted, I reserve the right to correct it all over the place.  It happens most frequently when watching shows on HGTV or TLC or other unscripted networks; while I understand that not everyone has perfect grammar all the time, I also understand that if I was on television knowingly I would make sure I was speaking properly.  As with the commercials, I shamelessly point these errors out regardless of my surroundings.

2. When a thing reminds me of a thing, I don’t hesitate to say it even if the people around me have no chance of understanding my reference.
This is less neuroticism and more complete mental whimsy, honestly, but it’s nonetheless a strange verbal tic of mine.  Now, when I’m in a classroom situation or the like, I can usually restrain myself.  But in any social situation, even surrounded by elderly/middle-aged adult family members, I will likely drop references.  (In such familial situations, I restrain myself only when the reference includes a mention of sex, drugs, alcohol, parts of the anatomy, or naughty language.)  This can come off dissociated and ridiculous, and often confuses those around me, but there’s the blessed few, like my mother, who know at least to look me straight-on and ask “Now what is that a quote from?”

1. I grammar check my Facebook statuses before I post them.
This is largely due to the pet peeve I have with Winnie-the-Pooh capitalization in statuses, excessive use of smilies and “lol” and “jk” and the like, and people not using the “[your name here] is/says/did/does/whatever” format.  Again, I don’t judge those who ignore this format, but by God, I got used to posting statuses in the day of the requisite “is” and I’m attached to full sentence statuses.  If what I want to say absolutely cannot be put into said format, I will put colons so it reads like the script of a play, sometimes quotation marks if it’s a quotation.  I don’t judge others, but I would judge myself.  (I’ve spotted statuses of mine where I slipped into first person halfway through on accident, another pet peeve of mine, and have actually removed them from my Wall history out of shame.)

 

–your fangirl heroine.