I have amazing friends. I don't think I've ever taken time to publicly give thanks to all of my amazing, awesome, funny, beautiful, kind-hearted, clever, creative friends.
So let's do that, shall we?
I love my friends. I have been lucky enough to have the opportunity to meet and know truly wonderful people. I have been granted the grace of surrounding myself with good, interesting, artistic people. My friends are amazing and do amazing things. My friends write stories and prose poetry. My friends take pictures. My friends are artists and illustrators. My friends write about music and dream of opening patisseries. My friends are nuclear technicians and labor organizers. My friends design clothes. My friends run for office when they just can't stand how terribly awry things are going. My friends get quoted in articles about developing social networks for social activists. My friends defend children charged with crimes, and write books about history. My friends are encyclopedic pop-culture cranks.
I have great friends.
But beyond all the amazing things my friends DO, my friends are all amazing people.
Which is not to say we're all perfect. No one's perfect, not even my wild, amazing, eclectic bunch of friends. But we're all good. Basically. We all want good things, for each other and ourselves and everyone else in the world, too. We all want a better world. And because my friends are so amazing and creative, they are all making that better world in their own amazing, beautiful, perfect ways.
But beyond all the amazing things my friends do, and the amazing people they all are, the thing that I am most grateful for today is that my friends are my friends. They are people that I can drink with on a schoolnight. I can have involved conversations about totem vegetables with my friends. They will try headcheese with me. They will give me tips on turning my life into a Wes Anderson movie (that are actually very helpful). They will watch The Young Ones with me, warm on a couch and content to just gape at the screen and ask, "What the fuck is going on."
My friends are good friends. They listen and laugh and sigh and make every day so much better than any day has any right to be. Except that every day, for everyone, should have such good friends in it. My friends gift me with giggles and thoughts and ideas and inspirations and hugs every day. I have the best friends. Everyone should have friends like this.
Here's to my amazing, wonderful, beautiful friends. And yours, too!
Showing posts with label nerdiness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nerdiness. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
On Language
I'm sort of a language/grammar/word snob. Shocking, I know, but it's true.
So imagine the actual shock I felt when I found myself in the unusual position of being the more liberal, free-spirited party involved in an argument over the (d)evoloution of language.
I guess, looking at my writing style now, it's not such a surprise. Just look at that use of the backslash, and also "(d)evolution." That's some next generation shit right there.
I use proper grammar and punctuation for everything. I use periods and commas, colons and semicolons, apostrophes and quotation marks, and I am fond of parenthetical phrases. I use all these exotic punctuation marks correctly. (I think I do, anyway. I probably mess up now and again.) Also, I always spell words completely. This is such a compulsion that unless I am seriously pressed for space (meaning, using Twitter or sending a text message) I always spell out cardinal numbers less than 21. Because that, kids, is how you do it.
I know the difference between "your" and "you're" and also between "there," "their," and "they're." (And I am an unabashed user of the Oxford comma, as you can note. I nearly cried when that TOTALLY FAKE report that the Oxford style guide had dropped it was making the rounds a few months back.)
I also have a multi-million dollar vocabulary. Why say red when you can say scarlet or crimson, or even persimmon? Why say beautiful when you can toss pulchritudinous in the mix? I fancy myself a writer, and words are thus my bread AND my butter.
Idiomatic phrases are fun for me. For example, do you know where the phrase "mad as a hatter" comes from? Let me tell you. Back in the nineteenth century, mercury was commonly used in felting processes, which means that milliners (or hatters) were constantly being exposed to mercury. Most of them ended up with some degree of mild- or moderate mercury poisoning. Low-level mercury poisoning gives you the shakes; higher levels of toxicity can cause increased aggressiveness and wild mood swings. So, hatters (by consequence of their profession) shook a lot and were prone to outbursts, both of which will make you seem pretty crazy to the average guy who passes you on the street or has to sit next to you in the bar. Thus, most milliners were thought to be crazy. Thus, the idiom "mad as a hatter" was born.
I decry people that say things like "Wat r u doing 2day?" I weep for humanity and die a little bit inside when I see someone use the possessive second-person pronoun instead of the contracted subject and verb combination.
But I don't really have a problem with the way we've turned certain things into their own parts of speech, fluidly moving from noun to verb and back again. I do not take issue with the phrases "google it" or "email me." I don't see them as evidence of a widespread cultural ennui toward language, or a deep-seated laziness. They are simply evidence of the evolving nature of language.
Language is not a dead thing. If it was, we would never have moved from Old English to the current form we use today, and all of us would be able to read Beowulf without the assistance of a translator. There would be no dialects. British English and American English would be exactly the same. Someone from Scotland would sound the same as someone from Northern California. Someone from Alabama would sound the same as someone from Australia.
There would be no slang. "Cool" would still mean something that was warmer than cold but not as warm as warm. If the word cool had ever even developed in the first place, since actually we'd all still be speaking Old English and I don't actually know if the word "cool" exists in Old English because I don't speak it.
The constantly changing nature of language does not necessarily denote a devolution. Change is not always bad. Sometimes it is just change. Sometimes it is actually good. That is as true of language as it is of any other thing. Allowing the linguistic denotations of things as fluid and multifaceted as the internet and its brand-new ways of transferring information to also have some of that same fluidity by not tying them to a single part of speech is not laziness. It is a more perfect mirror of the concept that the grouping of letters represents.
Because that is the whole point of language, is it not? To facilitate communication by providing the tools to communicate both concrete and abstract concepts drawn from the world at large. As our world becomes greater and more complex, our language must keep pace or risk becoming dead. And so perhaps we must give up the sharp demarcation between noun and verb. That is a small price to pay for what we gain in the real world by doing so.
Just don't ask me to give up the complexity of "you're" and "your" in favor of the single "your." Because I will cut you.
So imagine the actual shock I felt when I found myself in the unusual position of being the more liberal, free-spirited party involved in an argument over the (d)evoloution of language.
I guess, looking at my writing style now, it's not such a surprise. Just look at that use of the backslash, and also "(d)evolution." That's some next generation shit right there.
I use proper grammar and punctuation for everything. I use periods and commas, colons and semicolons, apostrophes and quotation marks, and I am fond of parenthetical phrases. I use all these exotic punctuation marks correctly. (I think I do, anyway. I probably mess up now and again.) Also, I always spell words completely. This is such a compulsion that unless I am seriously pressed for space (meaning, using Twitter or sending a text message) I always spell out cardinal numbers less than 21. Because that, kids, is how you do it.
I know the difference between "your" and "you're" and also between "there," "their," and "they're." (And I am an unabashed user of the Oxford comma, as you can note. I nearly cried when that TOTALLY FAKE report that the Oxford style guide had dropped it was making the rounds a few months back.)
I also have a multi-million dollar vocabulary. Why say red when you can say scarlet or crimson, or even persimmon? Why say beautiful when you can toss pulchritudinous in the mix? I fancy myself a writer, and words are thus my bread AND my butter.
Idiomatic phrases are fun for me. For example, do you know where the phrase "mad as a hatter" comes from? Let me tell you. Back in the nineteenth century, mercury was commonly used in felting processes, which means that milliners (or hatters) were constantly being exposed to mercury. Most of them ended up with some degree of mild- or moderate mercury poisoning. Low-level mercury poisoning gives you the shakes; higher levels of toxicity can cause increased aggressiveness and wild mood swings. So, hatters (by consequence of their profession) shook a lot and were prone to outbursts, both of which will make you seem pretty crazy to the average guy who passes you on the street or has to sit next to you in the bar. Thus, most milliners were thought to be crazy. Thus, the idiom "mad as a hatter" was born.
I decry people that say things like "Wat r u doing 2day?" I weep for humanity and die a little bit inside when I see someone use the possessive second-person pronoun instead of the contracted subject and verb combination.
But I don't really have a problem with the way we've turned certain things into their own parts of speech, fluidly moving from noun to verb and back again. I do not take issue with the phrases "google it" or "email me." I don't see them as evidence of a widespread cultural ennui toward language, or a deep-seated laziness. They are simply evidence of the evolving nature of language.
Language is not a dead thing. If it was, we would never have moved from Old English to the current form we use today, and all of us would be able to read Beowulf without the assistance of a translator. There would be no dialects. British English and American English would be exactly the same. Someone from Scotland would sound the same as someone from Northern California. Someone from Alabama would sound the same as someone from Australia.
There would be no slang. "Cool" would still mean something that was warmer than cold but not as warm as warm. If the word cool had ever even developed in the first place, since actually we'd all still be speaking Old English and I don't actually know if the word "cool" exists in Old English because I don't speak it.
The constantly changing nature of language does not necessarily denote a devolution. Change is not always bad. Sometimes it is just change. Sometimes it is actually good. That is as true of language as it is of any other thing. Allowing the linguistic denotations of things as fluid and multifaceted as the internet and its brand-new ways of transferring information to also have some of that same fluidity by not tying them to a single part of speech is not laziness. It is a more perfect mirror of the concept that the grouping of letters represents.
Because that is the whole point of language, is it not? To facilitate communication by providing the tools to communicate both concrete and abstract concepts drawn from the world at large. As our world becomes greater and more complex, our language must keep pace or risk becoming dead. And so perhaps we must give up the sharp demarcation between noun and verb. That is a small price to pay for what we gain in the real world by doing so.
Just don't ask me to give up the complexity of "you're" and "your" in favor of the single "your." Because I will cut you.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Battlestar Galactica and the Idealized Gender-Bending of R&D
Most people that know me, know that I am a big nerd. Like, a really big nerd. Part of the manifestation of that nerdiness is my deep and abiding love for the SciFi network (and I will refuse to call it SyFy for the duration of my life), for science fiction in general, and for Battlestar Galactica in particular.
This show was the best show on television.
I am not kidding. Or exaggerating. At all.
One of the many, many reasons that BSG was such a stellar example of what television can be when done correctly is it presented a vision of gender relations that, while idealized in that it was better than what we've got now, was still realistic and believable. You watched it and thought that we *could* get to this point, that it was possible. You watched it and thought, "This is the way it should be, warts and all."
Because there were warts. Human nature being what it is, there will always, always be ugly spots. And Battlestar Galactica acknowledged that.
Exhibit A: Coed Barracks.
Ah, yes. The Coed Barracks. Nothing says "gender equality" like stripping down and sleeping in a room with 20 other people, of both genders. Nothing gets you more used to the idea of the opposite sex as your equal than sharing a bathroom with them. I know. I went to a college that had nothing but coed dorms. With coed bathrooms.
Exhibit B: The Coed Boxing Match
And then there's this. Men and women, equally pummeling the shit out of each other. A girl can take her hits, and dish them out, too. And she wins as often as she loses. (Actually, in Starbuck's case, she wins way more often than she loses, but we're going with generalities here.)
When two people of the opposite gender can beat the living shit out of each other, you know gender equality has been achieved. The End.
But, on the flip side, there were examples of gender relations that the producers opted not to bend. For example, the only Cylon prisoners that endured rape as an interrogation tactic were female models.
It was also only the female characters in the show that used sexual manipulation- from Six to Ellen. None of the male characters ever did, not even Baltar, who was the ultimate manwhore of television. He was manipulated by sex, but he never used it to manipulate.
So it was ugly. But it was still better than where we're at.
This show was the best show on television.
I am not kidding. Or exaggerating. At all.
One of the many, many reasons that BSG was such a stellar example of what television can be when done correctly is it presented a vision of gender relations that, while idealized in that it was better than what we've got now, was still realistic and believable. You watched it and thought that we *could* get to this point, that it was possible. You watched it and thought, "This is the way it should be, warts and all."
Because there were warts. Human nature being what it is, there will always, always be ugly spots. And Battlestar Galactica acknowledged that.
Exhibit A: Coed Barracks.
Ah, yes. The Coed Barracks. Nothing says "gender equality" like stripping down and sleeping in a room with 20 other people, of both genders. Nothing gets you more used to the idea of the opposite sex as your equal than sharing a bathroom with them. I know. I went to a college that had nothing but coed dorms. With coed bathrooms.
When no one bats an eyelash over bodies like that, you know you're onto something. Sexual politics is the arguably the largest single obstacle to true gender equality. We are always sizing up anyone of the opposite sex that we meet; we are always thinking about them in sexual terms, and this prevents us from seeing them as human.
Also, it's pretty obvious that living with someone decreases this propensity towards viewing another as a sexual object- just think about all those failed marriages. And sexless marriages.
Exhibit B: The Coed Boxing Match
And then there's this. Men and women, equally pummeling the shit out of each other. A girl can take her hits, and dish them out, too. And she wins as often as she loses. (Actually, in Starbuck's case, she wins way more often than she loses, but we're going with generalities here.)
When two people of the opposite gender can beat the living shit out of each other, you know gender equality has been achieved. The End.
But, on the flip side, there were examples of gender relations that the producers opted not to bend. For example, the only Cylon prisoners that endured rape as an interrogation tactic were female models.
It was also only the female characters in the show that used sexual manipulation- from Six to Ellen. None of the male characters ever did, not even Baltar, who was the ultimate manwhore of television. He was manipulated by sex, but he never used it to manipulate.
So it was ugly. But it was still better than where we're at.
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