The Femifesto

People who consider themselves my friends (as well as probably a third of the population of Tumblr by now) know I have something of a dirty mind. And that I'm over-analytical and a bit self-centered. And all of this sort of distills into a desire to figure out how I, as a young woman in a male-dominated world, can get ahead. And by ahead at this particular moment I mean laid.

Ever since a guy I really cared about dumped me last spring I've been trying to figure out male psychology, at least so far as finding nice guys and making myself attractive to them. Last night, I had a breakthrough. I was at a dorm social with a guy friend (almost exactly my type but taken), and I heard two other guys behind us, talking about masturbating to build up stamina.

0.o

That emoticon there sums up the look on my friend's face, and mine for a couple of seconds. (It may also be the first time anyone's ever used an emoticon in a manifesto.) But then I started thinking: why do you need stamina? What's the point, what's the value? Why is there a stigma attached to premature ejaculation? Premature as opposed to what? As opposed to when you're ready for it? Hell, if a guy I'm with comes before he's ready to, that means I'm doing something right! (Or so I assume, given that my actual sexual experience is limited to the aforementioned ex-boyfriend.)

It occurs to me that sexual stamina is among the most misguided of the misguided contests of masculinity that occur in our society. It's both nonsensical on its own and incongruous within our instant-gratification society--why hold out on yourself in this most fundamental of things?

Yes, there are other aspects of traditional masculinity that make it difficult for nice people--male and female--to get any. To those, and to any nice guy being held back by them, I also have responses:

1. I don't care about the size of your penis--in fact, the smaller it is, the less it'll hurt.
2. I want sex to feel as good for you as it does for me. And vice versa.
3. You do not control what I put in my body. Relatedly, if I don't want you, I don't want you.
4. Feminism is not hating men; in fact, I don't understand women who hate men. Feminism is wanting a turn on top.

To summarize, guys, don't use society's standards to determine your self-worth; base that instead on yourself and the people you spend time with. In other words: stop measuring yourself and come to bed.

It's a warm day in December, and I'm indoors reading poetry

I have a habit of reading my assignments for Chinese and Western Poetry aloud, so as to understand them better. This weekend I was assigned to read "The Waste Land" by T S Eliot, and a couple of poems by Robert Frost.

First, the Frost poems. I read probably the two big ones. "The Road Not Taken" is one of my favorite poems, because I think it sums up my life pretty concisely: I often find myself wondering what would have happened, or what would have become of me, had I made certain decisions differently. Would I have a different major? Attend a different college? Not be a virgin? Would I be happier or less happy, or even alive?

Let's not be morbid anymore. I think this is my favorite line:
"And sorry I could not travel both/And be one person..."
You're one person if you take one path, another person if you take another, and then this ties back into the end of the poem, where the traveler realizes that even if he were to come back to this precise fork in the road and take the other path, it still wouldn't be the exact same other path because he himself will have changed. I may have more chances to make certain big decisions, but it won't be the same me making them, which in itself changes the paths.

There's a bit of an observer paradox in here. The decision is affected by what information you have and what you're inclined to do with the information. If any of you lurkers are quantum physicists in training, please explain what I'm thinking to me: why does macro-level decision making remind me of subatomic particles and their quantum states?

The second poem I read was "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening." I don't know that there's much to understand in this one; it tells a story, and one I've always sort of liked: a peaceful evening, a weary traveler who has a lot left to do before he reaches his destination, and a horse that isn't quite sure what's going on. But with all the things the traveler has to do, he still takes time to stop and admire the snow on the trees. I hope I can always do that: no matter how busy I am, or what life is throwing at me, I pray I will always be able to appreciate the world for what it is.

I've been interrupted by a couple of yutsos outside joking loudly about how "mail" boxes are sexist, and they want a "femail" box. Not that I haven't made that joke before, but there are almost always people being loud outside my room when I want to think or sleep. And I bet they wonder why I recite poetry loudly.

Then I read "The Waste Land," all five sections of it. I'm really not sure what it was about: some of the sections were about sex, some were about death, and maybe the first one was about the loss of innocence in childhood...and all throughout, there are strange bits of birdsong and untranslated Italian and German passages. The only places where it rhymes are places where Eliot is sampling other poems.

Hmm. T S Eliot as a remixer. I'm not a fan of remixes on the whole, but seeing a written-down one from before the DJ era is an interesting thing. Did the one spawn the other, I wonder?

But here's what I think, upon finishing the poem: I feel that I have experienced something great and ancient and sad and important without really knowing what it was. And yet I feel at some level the meaning of the poem is tied up in the onomatopoeia, and the sounds of the foreign languages, and if I understood what everything meant and what it referred to, the effect of the poem would be lessened. It would be drier, simpler, an accounting of Eliot's life, instead of the ocean of evoked emotion and potential meaning it is now.

My father was an Eliot fan when he was the right age for it; tonight I shall talk to him about it, maybe get up to my knees in that ocean. And then on Tuesday or Thursday I'll come to my poetry class and half-listen to my professor drain all that ocean away.

If there were water
and no rocks
If there were rocks
and also water

An English god in America

So here I am, writing for the very first time on my brand-new laptop. The first thing I did, after configuring the browser and connecting to my school Internet, was to come here to tell you about the beautiful and delightful and sad thing that happened to me this evening.

Tonight I went to Neil Gaiman's Night of Stardust at a concert hall just off campus. Neil Gaiman himself came and spoke to us about the fifteenth anniversary of Stardust, the history of the book and how he wrote it, and all kinds of other things--he read us an excerpt from his new book, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, which I now very much want. And it was lovely--he talks like he writes, and I fell in love with his accent, and was swept up in the story and his voice and the experience of being near one of the masters of storytelling.

Now comes the sad part. At the end of the talk, the audience were all invited to stand in line in front of six microphones, two on each level, and ask him questions. I was second on my side, behind a guy who waited fifteen minutes to ask a one-word question. By that point, I had to pee so badly it hurt, and I wasn't going to give up my spot in line--in fact, I asked that guy if I could go before him. No luck. So I stood there and waited, while Neil Gaiman answered questions at great length. He answered eight questions, as I stood with my mouth to the microphone, silently rehearsing my own question so I wouldn't forget it--and then the man who'd introduced him said we were out of time, and could Neil please read something, and could we all please sit down.

I felt like crying. I felt like my heart had sunk into my stomach. I felt like I had stood not fifty feet from God, incense in hand, and had not yet knelt to pray when I was told the temple had closed.

I can't imagine how anyone else was feeling.

What a slut time is: another open letter to John Green

Dear John Green,

Here we are at the present, and your most recent book. And I can't help but see it through the lens of yoru first one. The characters are of a similar type: Hazel the Drizzle, (sixteen, thyroid cancer with mets in the lungs, and I'm okay) Isaac the best friend, and Augustus the Hurricane, who brings Hazel out of her shell and proves that dying is not all about dying.

And again our heroes live in the shadow of imminent death; and again, you show how three teenagers can encompass the entire world.

But TFiOS is something else beyond all this: it's a journey, on the epic scale of The Wizard of Oz. (This is, I think, what you tried to do but did not quite achieve in Paper Towns, Which ends after Q discovers his wizard is a Fraud, but Before she can give any Life-Affirming gifts.) Hazel makes the journey from her mundane yet doomed life to the magical city of Amsterdam, where she meets her own personal god and discovers that he's simply a crazy old man who no longer cares for the story he created, the myth that has sustained her. And she returns home by way of discovering love...and in the end, Peter van Houten is a good man, but a very bad god. Or, as Augustus said in his last letter, he's a bad man, and a good writer.

I suppose it's ironic that I'm reading this on Veterans Day. Or maybe it's just appropriate, because of Augustus's obsession with heroic sacrifices. I dare say that the people who fight cancer are veterans even more so than the people who fight wars, and I wonder what Augustus would say to that. And I suppose it's apt that I find Hazel drawing strength from the experiences of Anne Frank, reading as I am just after the anniversary of Kristallnacht, at which I wondered once again why it is important to be saturated with sad stories, and whether merely surviving is heroic. Augustus thinks not; I wonder what Hazel would say.

I was reluctant to read this for a long time because in the last few generations of my family there have been two cancer survivors, one of them my mother, and three victims. So I didn't think I needed another cancer story. But this was neither too much nor too soon. To be honest, I thought you were going to end the book mid-sentence; I'm glad that you chose the other sort of ending that this book needed, the ending that doesn't end.

John, your stories show us the universe within each of us that needs to be noticed. They give us forever within the numbered days, and for that I'm grateful.

Sincerely,
Mara

A few sad things

Today is the 47th anniversary of Kristallnacht, a series of acts of terror that effectively kicked off the Holocaust. I got to Hillel an hour late by accident, and discovered that the board had invited a group of local Holocaust survivors. I ate with some friends and left early to avoid getting punched in the feels.

Yesterday I had the fight to end all fights with my ex, who is one of about three people who reads this blog. It was the fight we should have had when he dumped me, except neither of us had the balls to let each other go then. That much at least I've learned about yourself. He may stop reading after yesterday; but I started writing this before anyone read it, and I will probably keep writing when no one reads it.

So I've been reluctant to start reading The Fault in Our Stars; I don't need more sadness right now. On top of that, I have projects I've been neglecting in order to read these--reading for pleasure seems to take up more time than it used to, even when the book goes as fast as John's do. But it will happen this weekend.

And now a happy thing: Yesterday I had a bit of an epiphany. In my music class we're studying gamelan, a kind of Indonesian classical court music. And ever since I learned what Gamelan was, I've hated it; I've thought it sounded jangly and cacaphonous and alien. But yesterday in my recitation we actually learned to play gamelan. And I realized it's like meditating, but in a group. Each instrument has a melody that repeats over and over, and they all fit together and it's beautiful. At least from the inside. I don't know whether I can stand to listen to it from the outside yet.

Count the headlights

Will Grayson, Will Grayson is essentially a 180 from Paper Towns. Where on Monday I felt empty, today I'm feeling ALL the feels.

First: frustration. Will 1 reminds me of myself--but of John's protagonists that remind me of me, he's the least. He's dark in a way I'm not, resigned to his situation and determined not to care anymore. And Will 2 is lonely and depressed, living out a Facebook fantasy that dare not speak its name. And yet at the same time I can laugh aloud, because their observations about life are occasionally so pithy or maybe just so offbeat that I have to stop and wonder whether they have a point.

But both Wills will be redeemed; their saviors seems to be time, random chance and the rainbow-striped mass of emotion who goes by the name of Tiny Cooper. This story is really about him, and his attempts to find love, and his dream that someday he'll be appreciated for who he is.

Will 1 was right: he is more or less a moon, caught in the orbit of Planet Tiny. But that really isn't a bad thing--he's swept along and into and through adventures like Pudge in Alaska's orbit; and in the process, he learns to choose his own path without wandering away entirely. Likewise, Will 2, who's always been desperate to keep control of his misery, is caught in Tiny's gravity, and in falling, he learns how to land on his feet.

My name is not Will Grayson, and I appreciate you, Tiny Cooper. You've made my life a little bit more fabulous.

Updates

He did show up. And Obama has, on the surface of things, won. And now it's bedtime.

The most exciting part of the election is the most boring

I had no reading time to speak of today, since Tuesdays are one of my busiest days (the other being Thursdays). And after all my classes I went to an election watch party in my dorm...at which I was so bored I couldn't even come up with things to say to the few people who talk to me at such things. Though I did invite a male neighbor over...but if he was going to show up, it would have been fifteen minutes ago.

Why is the most important part of the election--the voting and counting of votes--the boring part? And it's arguably the most exciting part too--this is the part where people actually get to do something. I don't get it. Though I am wondering whether, if Romney should put my healthcare in jeopardy by winning, I should convince my mom that we all need to move to Canada or England.

I'll probably go to bed before anything is decided, but in the meantime I'm watching November videos from Brotherhood 2.0, and wishing I was in Nerdfighterlike with someone.

-.- So it goes.

I ripped these out of your symbol: an open letter to John Green

John, I have a confession to make: While reading Paper Towns, I felt bored. Let me explain why: on the one hand, it's the book--it seems to move more slowly and say less than your previous two. Looking for Alaska had all the pretensions of a first novel. But I like those pretensions, the fact that when a writer is starting out, he or she tries to explain the whole world and everything in it, and how we the readers should live our lives. Which Looking for Alaska and An Abundance of Katherines both do quite well. Paper Towns seems shriveled by comparison, its moral being not that the world is an extraordinary place full of extraordinary people, but that we must, for reasons of living, see people as only ordinary.

On the other hand, there's me. Because I was a friendless misfit at a high school just like Q's, I feel I know the meat of the story already and don't need to be told it. I remember being awkward and rejected at dances, not going to parties and then feeling alone in the crowd when someone was nice enough to invite me, feeling the "high-school-is-ending-so-we-have-to-reveal-that-deep-down-we-all-love-everybody-bullshit." I've had Q's experiences, all but the frantic road trip that forms part three of the book, but including the painful realizations that accompany its end...and I don't need to be told that these things happen.

The thing I do wish is that I'd had a Ben and a Radar, people I was actually friends with, or thought I was--by sophomore year of high school I was thoroughly disillusioned with my classmates. I wish I'd had friends, I wish I'd had that kind of adventure...and yet I can't envy Q, because I have perspective he doesn't. Being in college, I know life will get better for him without Margo and without high school. He'll go to Duke, find love (or at least lust) there, learn to imagine people--and himself--more complexly, without the sad paper girl who has haunted his dreams all his life. I'm glad I didn't have a Margo Roth Spiegelman, because I can make my own adventures; I don't have to follow someone else to make my life interesting.

To be fair, John, I copied down a lot of quotes. Your books (thus far) are extremely quotable, which is good because I like reading things I can savor on my tongue like bites of a GoFast bar. But I'm not reading this one aloud, because in the middle it bored me, and at the end it made me feel empty, the kind of emptiness I expected from Looking for Alaska, which made me scared to read it for my whole first year of being a Nerdfighter. (Listening to you read a draft of Paper Towns in a Youtube video from 2007 is what inspired me to read all your books together. Now that's ironic.)

But  the end of Looking for Alaska was beautiful and uplifting, and I'm certainly not complaining about the male stripper. In Paper Towns, however, the quest leads only to a dimensionless girl, in a town that exists only on maps, and so instead of a book of ideas, this was a paper book. It baffles me how, during the wondrous time that the first years of Brotherhood 2.0 must have been, you created a story that was this empty.

Tomorrow I shall start Will Grayson, Will Grayson. It isn't all yours (cowritten); but perhaps it was time for that. I hope it's one I can read aloud.

Most sincerely,
Mara

A Cabana Enshrined Toe Funk

Today I read An Abundance of Katherines. Actually, I reread it--the first time was in high school, well before I knew who John Green was. I expected to enjoy coming back to it, since I usually love rereading books...but I didn't. And I think I know why.

I have Asperger's, and I've worked very hard (albeit with a lot of prodding from my mom) to get to a point where you can't tell in casual conversation. And spending time with people who remind me of my junior-high (or even high-school) self makes me uncomfortable. I don't want to go back to that.

I'd forgotten how much Colin Singleton reminds me of me.

But as I kept going, half-ignoring the footnotes I remembered loving, I realized that Colin has made the same journey I have, and, at the end of the book, is about where I am now. He set out on the path toward appearing normal the day he met Hassan, who not only tolerates Colin but actively helps him, telling him when he's going off on tangents that ordinary people find uninteresting and steering him towards actually having social skills. I don't remember having a Hassan, besides my mom, so I'm not sure how I got here, either because looking back is painful, or because I don't actually remember the process.

Whatever the case, I think An Abundance of Katherines does a very good job of explaining me, both to myself and to other people. I wish it had existed during the years my mom tried to make me read boring nonfictional books about autism. When I have children who are at least nerdy, if not on the autism spectrum (because I intend to marry someone who's as nerdy as I am, if more socially savvy), and they don't understand why people at school don't like them, I will give them An Abundance of Katherines and tell them that it's about a boy named Colin, and at some level about a boy named John--but most importantly, it's about them, and it's about me.

There's a scene early in the book where Colin, at about three years old, reads the fable of the tortoise and the hare, and The Missing Piece by Shel Silverstein, and doesn't understand that they're about him. Seeing that, I realized how far I've come, and how far Colin has come, and how, in a way, without knowing it, we're making the journey together.

PS The title of this post is one of a shit-ton of results I got from plugging "An Abundance of Katherines" into an anagram generator. (Given that Colin makes anagrams like I make bracelets, it seemed appropriate.) Here are some of the other funny results:

A Cabana Kneed Nosher Unfit (yeah, cabanas are like gazebos. You don't want to anger them. (Comment if you got that and I'll come up with a prize to give you.))
A Cabana Kenned Our Fishnet (that's smart of it)
A Cabana Kenned Shire Fount
A Cabana Feed Neutron Knish (I'm not sure why this thing is fixated on cabanas, but there we are.)

PPS The other bit of media I consumed today was a truly terrible movie called Fright Night. I watched it with a friend (yes, I have a female friend) and took screencaps of David Tennant.

The Labyrinth of Suffering

I got it into my head this week that I should read all of John Green's books. All five, in a row. A classmate lent me the first four, and today I'm reading Looking for Alaska.

I didn't like the first few pages; it took me a while to sympathize with Alaska and the Colonel and to understand just how desperate for friendship the narrator was. But once i got past that little, I was hooked. I'm reading it as fast as I read anything, but when I slow down, to savor a quote, I hear John reading it aloud in my head. This book is very him; not, perhaps, anything he ever wished to be (which is what I base my writing on), but certainly something he could have been.

The narrator is obsessed with learning famous people's last words. Of these the most relevant to Alaska is Simon Bolivar's: "How am I to get out of this damned labyrinth?" In the first third of the book, Alaska challenges the narrator to tell her what the labyrinth is, and later answers the question herself: suffering. And she has an answer to Simon Bolivar: straight and fast, which is what convinces the Colonel that her death was suicide.

I believe it, even three-quarters of the way through, when the narrator still refuses to. And at some level, I'm dealing with Alaska's death as intensely and deeply and personally as Pudge and the Colonel are. This is why, in spite of my first-page misgivings, I think this is a great book. It makes me live its characters' lives.

And I have an answer to Bolivar's last question, a challenge to poor Alaska and to Pudge, who resents being left behind among the living, and to every single person who lives on this planet. It comes to me through the scenes in which Mr. Hyde discusses Buddhism, and has echoes of my favorite album, The Complex by Blue Man Group. Which I intend to listen to after I finish this book. (I guess that's a mark of a great book: you have to recover from reading it.)

How are you to get out of this damned labyrinth? By climbing the walls. I can't do it, sobs Alaska, already drunk and tired of life. I don't have the strength. Bullshit, I'd tell her, and give her a boost.

PS The awkward-blowjob scene? Not worth banning a book over. Though if I had to come up with a list of reasons to ban a book, I'd probably give you a blank page.

Dreams, headaches, and the fine art of being a sycophant

I think I've been too busy watching Vlogbrothers videos to notice that October has ended? Well, it has, all of a sudden, gotten cold and wet. Thank G-d the hurricane didn't come this far inland.

Monday night I had the best dream I've had in a while. It involved four different incarnations of the Doctor, Elijah Wood, and that's all I'm going to say for the sake of keeping this blog family-friendly. Not sure why Elijah Wood...maybe I'm just excited for The Hobbit.
But it's been sort of downhill from there. The last two nights I've had trouble sleeping (and some really weird dreams last night), and today I woke up with something that may now (at 3pm) be a full-fledged migraine. I rarely get headaches, but when I do they're bitches. Trying Ibuprofen and chamomile tea.

Wednesday morning was quite nice too...I dressed up as a Turing machine for my Mind and Machine class. The prof probably won't give me the free A he promised, but I'm pretty sure I made his day, especially because I was the only person who took his idea to heart. Wish I'd taken a picture...I used my scarf and some binder clips for the tape and symbols; the symbols I deleted were MnMs. That was a fun last-minute costume.

So, all I ended up doing was sucking up to the teacher. I am now officially a sycophant, and I can't say I care, not this late in the semester anyway. And in half an hour, I'm off to do some more brownnosing in my Comparative Poetry class. I'm one of those people who doesn't look like they're paying attention but can still answer all the questions correctly. That being said, I'm not a fan of the prof. She's the kind who insists she's right about everything, and says the same things over and over. Not to mention I really don't want to go to another class today...this morning I was so tired I was practically high off lack of sleep (just ask my linguistics classmates); the nap before Chinese didn't help--and then the nausea and headache showed up. But I can't miss today, since we're starting the Western half of the class (a lot less than half now...we've got what, five weeks left?).

So I shall soldier on reluctantly...and then go to bed very early.

Love your legs...or else!

So here I am, sitting on a hill in the shadow of what's going to be a freshman dorm after having a morning class canceled so I watched old Vlogbrothers videos all through lunch and that's why I'm talking like this. They tend to get stuck in my head.

Anyway, it's been an interesting week. On Tuesday I took two old pairs of jeans and cut the legs off them; right now I'm wearing the obscenely short ones, which friends say look good and which I can get away with wearing because it's 80 degrees out and will be nearly as warm tomorrow; after that, it'll get chilly again. But I've started thinking of these as my "love your legs...or else!" pants, because when wearing shorts that don't even reach mid-thigh (because I cut the legs where they've started fraying) you have to have high self-esteem or you're screwed. So, here I am, on a hill, learning to love my legs.

The other pair of cutoffs are knee-length (again, where the fraying started) and I don't think they're as flattering. But I'm using those four extra legs to make a tote bag that maybe my knitting needles won't punch through. Speaking of which, I'm knitting a Dalek dishtowel that I found on the Internet, and crocheting a Sierpinski Carpet blanket. Pictures when they're done.

Wednesday night I went to The Finer Things Club, where the board members seem to think I'm cooler than square watermelon. And I'm not quite sure whether they're being ironic, but it's nice to feel like you feel needed. I've joined the Dress Code Committee, because the current board isn't quite accommodating  enough of women. But it soon will be *evil laugh*

Which brings us to my adventures today.

Here are two leaves I caught out of the air on the way to my World Music test. The one on the left I fumbled three times and finally picked up off the ground; the other one I actually caught.

After the test I ran into an astronomy class using solar-filtered telescopes to look at the sun. My response: "ooh, there's spots!" It was awesome.

And now I have a quiz in Chinese. So I'll see you around. DFTBA.

Eat of it and you shall die: how The Da Vinci Code changed my life

Today's post is inspired by NPR's PG-13 series, in which writers talk about the books that influenced them as preteens.

Don't get up. I know what the intelligent world thinks of The Da Vinci Code. And let me be the first to say I agree with them. But that's not what this is about. This is about the day at summer camp when a counselor gave it to me with the best of intentions, and left me alone with it. It fascinated me. It was like nothing my twelve-year-old self had ever read. And it taught me three lessons that have made me who I am.

The first thing I got from The Da Vinci Code was a rough understanding of how sex worked and how people thought about it.  At twelve, I was embarrassed to even think about What's Happening To My Body, let alone to read those cute pink books my mother bought for me. Dan Brown nudged me toward accepting what I was becoming, and may even have been a root cause of my starting to write myself, and about that in particular. My free-range detective Mia Lazarus, whose response to her occasional mental blocks is to get laid, would not have been possible otherwise.

The second lesson I learned was that orthodoxy is not always right, and that challenging it could be worthwhile. I read that the Mona Lisa could have been named for Egyptian fertility gods, that there could be some truth to conspiracy theories, that Jesus could have been married--in fact, the closest I've ever come to believing in Jesus was while I was reading that book. My mother would finish the job in a couple years' time as my high school civics teacher, giving me not only orthodoxies that needed to be challenged but also the tools and arguments to challenge them with. But the world Dan Brown created made me a little more ready to learn her lessons.

I say "created," and that's an important part of the third lesson, which I didn't learn until years later: that books could lie. There's an important distinction in my head between fiction and lies: fiction can be true if it's well-researched or -crafted; if its insights into human nature trump the fact that its events never actually took place. The Da Vinci Code packaged its lies and poor construction in just enough truth that I learned from it--and in addition, I learned how to spot bad writing. The book was both the snake and the fruit in my childhood Garden of Reading.

The game of expectations

I saw two sad youtube videos this morning. Each was part of a series I follow closely, yet one struck me as much sadder than the other.
Here they are: "The Lizzie Bennett Diaries" episode 42 and Doctor Who's "Pond Life" part 5. The second one had a much bigger emotional impact than the first. Go watch them both, and then I'll tell you why.

Meanwhile, here's a picture that might help explain it.

Back? Good. Here's my thought: For one thing, I'm much more invested in the plight of Amy Pond, Doctor's Companion, than I am in the travails of Lizzie Bennett, whiny closed-minded grad student. Why do I follow her, then? Because I want to see what they do with the narrative. Doctor Who, on the other hand, is narrated by much more likeable characters, and practically an adopted religion for me. Second: Amy's troubles are bigger--her husband just walked out for no specified reason. Lizzie's best friend is moving away to take the job Lizzie herself just turned down. I'd tell you the fable of the dog in the manger, but I think you already know it.

The thing that got me thinking about this whole deal, though, was this. Notice I said "narrative" just now. The Lizzie Bennett Diaries are a direct update of Pride and Prejudice; it follows the plot exactly, with a couple of topical changes (the racelifts, the swimmers, job offers vs marriage) that make sense given that it's an update. But it's still a known narrative: I can go to Wikipedia and look up what's just happened and what will happen next.
This Doctor Who story is an entirely new thing. All I knew going in was that Arthur Darvill (who plays Rory, for those of you not yet in the know) said there'd be a cliffhanger leading into tomorrow's season premiere. He didn't say it would involve Steven Moffat punching us all in the gut, as is his executive wont. There's no prestructured narrative, from the perspective of the audience: even with all the online spoilers, everything new is totally new and surprising.

And this didn't make me feel any less like I want a hug. Oh well, I guess I'll go celebrate Bad Wolf Day early.

A little back-to-school pop culture analysis

I have returned to Pittsburgh; the big thing right now, aside from the obvious eighteen credits, is preparing all the clubs I'm on the board of for the school year. Making sure Teahouse has enough spoons (and schmoozing freshmen--when did I learn to schmooze? Must have been in China), getting on the same page with my ex about the Doctor Who Club meeting for the season premiere, three hours of tabling at the Activities Fair, all the good stuff. And I've been relaxing by picking things apart.

First, Nathan Fillion. He really is ruggedly handsome...and I've finally forgiven him, three days after seeing it, for being Captain Hammer in Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. The character of Captain Hammer takes the little bit of immature assholery that make Malcolm Reynolds and Richard Castle amusing, and makes it a defining character trait. But that's not the worst part. The worst part is that you go into Dr. Horrible expecting a lighthearted parody of superhero movies, with heroes that are heroes and villains that are villains. But about the middle of Act II, what's been staring you in the face for fifteen minutes finally slaps you: Billy's an ordinary nerd, and Captain Hammer is deliberately messing with him. And from there, the audience's expectations break down right along with Billy's sanity. And just when you think Dr. Horrible has the upper hand, the bottom drops out.

I'm sure I said at some point on this blog (and if I haven't, I'm saying it now) that I can't play tropes straight anymore. Everything I touch becomes either invoked, subverted, or deconstructed. Joss Whedon writes the same way. And as creepy as Firefly was at times, and as much as I hated Nathan Fillion for what he was doing to poor geeky Neil Patrick Harris...it's beautiful. I can't get it out of my head, not because of the scary, but because of how it transcends scary. Joss Whedon is like Neil Gaiman in that regard: he scares you, but he makes you happy about it.

Next week is the series premiere of Doctor Who. More on that then; I may also blog about "Pond Life," the series of shorts that starts on Monday about Amy and Rory trying to be normal, up until they get dragged back into the Doctor's adventures.

And the other new thing from the Moff this week: three words have been released regarding the next season of Sherlock. The words are "Rat, Wedding, Bow," and I'm fairly sure I know what they mean.

• "Rat" can be the Giant Rat of Sumatra, which is mentioned briefly in "The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire" as "a story for which the world is not yet ready." The story of the giant rat of Sumatra has been written several times by other authors; perhaps the Moff has decided we're finally ready for the story.
• "Wedding" is most likely "The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor," a relatively straightforward runaway-bride case. I look forward to their making it complex and interesting. Alternatively, John could be getting married, as he does at least once (at most thrice, depending on how you order the stories) in the original; however, since everybody but Sherlock and John ship Sherlock/John, I don't think that's likely.
• "Bow" is "His Last Bow," the very last official Sherlock Holmes story. This tells me that the series will end after episode nine.

The Moff has done his homework, and he expects us to do ours. As cheat sheets go, I wouldn't rely on this one for the final, but it's an idea of what you might study.

One more fun thing I came up with today: If David Tennant is TV dipped in chocolate, what are the rest of the New Series Doctors and their Companions? Enjoy.

Week 6: Mahjong, rain, Oxford, and the Enlightenment

It's kind of hard to get my head around that I'm going home in a little over two weeks. Except maybe I have been comprehending it subconsciously: I've been more homesick lately, and more likely to eat Western food--though having a cafe in the dorm helps with that, since in means I don't have to walk twenty minutes to get to the cafeterias on campus.
On the other hand, yesterday I had the most Chinese-y experience I've yet had here, and will probably ever have in this program: my tutor and I and a couple of my classmates spent most of the afternoon at a teahouse. The building was probably a hundred years old. The rituals of steeping and serving the tea (jasmine, by the way, and very good) may not have changed for centuries. The mahjong table was new--the electronic dice and built-in tile shuffler make it maybe thirty years old--but mahjong is mahjong, and all together it gave me a feeling I hadn't yet experienced. I've been to Tian'anmen, and to the Great Wall...but tea and mahjong are the real soul of China.
And the weather held for our excursion. There's been a lot of rain in Beijing lately. Last Saturday floods killed nearly forty people, and it's only supposed to rain more this weekend. Ah well, I guess it's a nice break from hot and humid. If it ever actually rains.
And speaking of last Saturday, that was the evening I finally watched Anonymous. It's a lovely movie; the only people I know of who don't like it are the ones who can't be buggered to put aside their pet theory about who wrote Shakespeare's plays. That the movie supports the Earl of Oxford theory only matters insofar as Edward deVere (said Earl) is a well-constructed and beautifully-acted character. (Not to mention attractive--he's played by Rhys Ifans, whom most people know from Notting Hill, and Jamie Campbell Bower, whom everyone will soon know from The Mortal Instruments.) The point of the story is that no matter who wrote Shakespeare's plays, they're still wonderful works of art, and powerful cultural icons, and a picture of the human condition at a particular point in history that still resonates with modern readers/viewers. All that good stuff.
And so it annoys me that people get bogged down in petty details, and stick to their biases to the point that they can no longer understand why anyone else sees the world differently. Which brings me to this week's episode of Crashcourse, in which John Green tells conflicting stories about the death of Captain Cook and asks whether, since transcending our own biases is so difficult, it's actually worth doing.
My answer: of course it is! As they keep quoting in Up the Down Staircase, "a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?" The fact that something is difficult makes it even more important that we try to do it. Colonizing the Americas was difficult; so were uniting the United States and landing a man on the moon; so too will be curing AIDS and sending manned missions to Mars. Humans do things because they're difficult.
And learning to see things from someone else's perspective shouldn't be all that difficult. To return to the Enlightenment, which I mentioned a couple of months ago and which John Green seems to enjoy talking about: the scientists of the late 18th and early 19th centuries believed it was possible for man to see the world from God's perspective. I'm prepared to argue that we've accomplished that. Now that we can see what a god sees, why do we refuse to see what other human beings see?

Lessons from Abroad: middle of week 4

Almost halfway already. That's a good feeling, oddly enough. The charm of being somewhere exotic and foreign didn't last long...Beida is already just a place to live in. Beyond that, here are some of the things I've learned this week:

• Food from Sichuan province might be hot, but Korean food is as spicy as it gets. One evening last week, I ate at a Korean restaurant on campus. The beef dish I got turned out to be right about at my limit for spicy things; I couldn't eat more than a bite or two at a time. And apparently they make it even hotter in Korea. So I have decided to set a new scale for measuring spiciness, measured in bibimbites (bbb); one bbb is how much my tongue and the roof of my mouth hurt after one bite of that dish (which was not in fact bibimbap, but I needed a cool name). The next day, I ate Sichuan-style liver (it may even have been beef), which was about 3 bbb--that is, it took three bites for my mouth to hurt as much as I remember one bite of the Korean beef taking.
• I'm a lot less picky about food than I thought I would be. I'm still avoiding pork and shellfish where I can, but where I can't I'll eat pork. Various kinds of tofu are also getting less weird for me...and there's some spicy things I find I can eat, because I paid for them and don't want to waste money.
• Thought 1 from homestay: Elderly Chinese people are a lot like elderly Jewish people. I had dinner this evening with my homestay family, an older couple, and the wife was very bubbe-like, urging me to keep eating, making most of the conversation, and occasionally repeating something I'd said to the husband, who wasn't really paying attention. It felt familiar, and was therefore nice. The food was good too--kind of a mild beef chili-soup-thing over beef noodles.
• Thought 2 from homestay: Personal comfort doesn't really seem to be a factor in ordinary Chinese people's lives. My evidence: the beds. Living in the dorm, I thought my bed was uncomfortably hard. Then I moved into the homestay, and discovered how much less comfortable beds could be. The dorm beds now seem nice and soft, and I imagine my bed at home will be heaven. If it's not already too soft.
• The Chinese seem to have a mostly positive stereotype of Jews: they think we're especially smart, and I hope I've met my hosts' expectations in this regard.

Before I go, here's a picture of a Lucky Bird. They're as common on the Beida campus as feral cats, or (for comparison) slightly less common than pigeons in Pittsburgh. And they're prettier than pigeons.

Lessons from Abroad

I've been in China for two weeks already, for an eight-week intensive language-learning program at Peking University, and I'm already getting a decent picture of how urban Chinese society works. I've been so busy lately I almost didn't write this, but here are some lessons I've already learned:

• Americans are neat freaks. In China, there's no assiduous cleaning of restaurant tables and bathroom stalls; certain places will always smell terrible to the average American nose; and if you hand-wash your clothes, it's hard to get the stains out. This is okay. Except that I plan on buying more shirts when I come home to the American standard of cleanliness, because I'm never going to get those beef broth stains out of my light-colored shirts. (Noodles in beef broth behave like spaghetti in tomato sauce; and you'll always be wearing a light-colored shirt when you eat either.)
• Food is fun, when it doesn't get all over you. For one thing, Chinese politeness standards are not American; it's perfectly acceptable to slurp noodles, which I can't seem to do neatly, hence the stains. Still usually fun. For another, chopsticks are awesome things. Third, there's so many exciting dishes, from baozi (the big round dumplings) to chicken soup with the meat still on the bones, to Peking duck in little rice pancakes. (That was an awesome day.)
• You don't need to understand everything that's being said to you to get what's going on. However, when someone is talking directly to you, you'll always wish you could remember all your vocabulary.
• Sunny days are to be appreciated...of course, as with everything else, there are exceptions. We've been lucky enough to have four blue-sky days in a row, but that makes it hotter. Best way to get around that: carry an umbrella. They were invented for the sun, you know.
• Get as much sleep as you can; the teachers will run you ragged.

And with that, I'm gradually off to bed.

Nerdy knitting and conspiracy theories

Note: SPOILERS for the first Harry Potter book and Series 1, 3, 5, and 6 of new Doctor Who.

So I've finished another scarf. No, not a third Fourth Doctor scarf...I'm using the leftover yarn from those to make a blanket, and to be honest, I need a break from that pattern. So I found something new: a prime factoring scarf pattern. I got the idea from this wonderfully creative blog. Basically, each color represents a prime number, and you combine the colors to get composite numbers. For mine, 2 is green, 3 is purple, and so on.

It starts with 2 at the lower end and goes up to 75. 5 is light blue, not white.

I'm also in the process of making matching tube socks, because this is an opportunity to try making socks. We'll see how that works out.

The other thing on my mind is, as usual, Doctor Who-related. Today, though, it's about the fans, and a crazy theory I've just learned about from a credulous Facebook Friend. Like most conspiracy theories, it was bizarre, paranoid, and easily refuted by someone who knows the literature.

Here's a video that presents the theory that Rory Williams is either the Master or his son. I'll give you some time to watch it. In the meantime, here's a picture I found on deviantart that combines my love of knitting with my love of Doctor Who.

Done? Okay. I don't know about you, but I went through a phase where I believed conspiracy theories. Fortunately, it coincided with my Harry Potter phase, and since then I've learned to think critically. (I do love Harry Potter; I'm just not obsessed with it anymore.)

I'll go through this point by point. At 0:21, speaking of Harry Potter, the author of the video compares the Master to Voldemort's possession of Quirrell, suggesting that he would hide in a weak mind, like Rory's. Rory? Weak? Bollocks. Have you been watching the show? Go say that to his face, you...*ahem*

At 0:35, he notes that Rory has become more assertive, even to the point of being violent, and claims this is the Master's personality showing through. However, it's interesting to note that Rory was deleted from history in the last season, then was recreated as a plastic Roman. He even admits that this is a traumatic experience, that he represses because he's having trouble dealing with it. But we can tell that he's dealing with it: by "A Good Man Goes to War" he is completely comfortable putting on the role of the Last Centurion, and in "The God Complex" he is shown an exit instead of his greatest fear (noted later in the video). The prison knows that he fears nothing, because he is the Last Centurion. He doesn't even fear losing Amy, because as the Centurion he can protect her from everything. And just in case I need to say it, the Master wouldn't deal with such an experience. He'd bottle it up and let it feed his madness.

At 0:50, Rory complains of a "banging" in his head ("Let's Kill Hitler"), which Amy jokes is Hitler wanting to be let out of the cupboard. Note to the author of the video: This is a joke. Amy is snarky like that, and that's part of what I like about her. Anyway. At that moment, Rory has just witnessed Mels's regeneration into her River Song form, at very close range. He has therefore been exposed to vortex energy. Given the violent reactions of worse-protected minds (namely, Rose's and Donna's) to vortex energy, Rory's headache is at least normal and at most a testament to how tough he's become. And NOT the Master's drumbeat.

In the paragraph on "The God Complex", the author guesses that the Doctor's fear has to do with the Master. This is reasonable. He decides that the "TARDIS alarms" are making the same noise as they did when and only when the TARDIS was hooked up to the paradox generator in "The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords." This makes less sense, if only because I've heard the cloister bell a third time in the New Series, in the Children in Need special "Time Crash." That's the story where we learn it's the cloister bell. It's rung other times in the Classic series, not always to do with the Master.

The assumption in this paragraph that makes no sense at all is that because the Doctor recognizes the person in the room, it's Rory. In the words of the Tenth Doctor, what? What? It doesn't have to be Rory for the Doctor to recognize him, or her or it for that matter. My guess is that it was either the Master or the Valeyard. More likely the Valeyard, because the Master, as far as I can tell, has nowhere to get more lives from, and the Valeyard claimed to be the Twelfth (or twelfth-and-a-half) Doctor. My interpretation of that scene, now that this video has prompted me to think about it, is that the Eleventh Doctor's greatest fear is becoming his own worst enemy, and he'll rely (as he always has) on his Companions to keep him from falling.

Moving on: at 1:30, the author claims that Rory is not the Master, but instead the Master's son by Lucy Saxon. True, Rory's parents are only ever mentioned in a deleted scene from Series 5; however, that's only slightly less than Amy's parents get. For most of Series 5, they've been erased from history, and they only appear as proof that Big Bang Two has restored the timeline. Then Amy and Rory go traveling again, and when they return home the Doctor has given them their own flat and they go off and live as a married couple. The lack of parents is meaningless in this context--and note that it has never been the norm for the Companion's family to have a major role in the story; this is only a regular thing in the RTD era (New Series 1-4).

Now, about Lucy Saxon. There is no evidence anywhere that she's pregnant, nor that the Master has more than a pretense of affection for her. (He indirectly calls her a pet.) That she gave birth between "Last of the Time Lords" and "The End of Time", in which she is implied to have died, is a long shot; and during that time she had no access to time travel, so the hypothetical baby could not have aged twenty years in the space of one or two, and cannot be Rory.

The last point the author makes is something I had to stop and think about. Why is Rory not surprised that the TARDIS is bigger on the inside? Turns out Rory gave us the answer: He researched the latest scientific theories. It's been two years between the Prisoner Zero incident and when Rory first enters the TARDIS; the reappearance of the time traveler that your girlfriend has been obsessed with all her life and who everyone thought was imaginary inspired him to do his homework, if only so he could keep up with Amy.

So we've got everything that Rory isn't. What, then, is he? Here's what I think.
Rory is an ordinary person whom extraordinary things have happened to. He's been kicked around by life, but always put back into the game one way or another (dream worlds, universal reboots, CPR, you name it (damn you Moffat!)). And he's learned to accept what life throws him at; and this way he's become a total badass. And through it all, he never loses his humanity, always loves Amy, never stops doing everything he can both for her and for the universe. He's a hero: the Harry Potter, the Philip Pirrip, the Candide of the Doctor Who universe. He's a Companion's Companion, and the story has nearly always been about the Companions.

Let's keep discussing.

Eat Drink Man Woman: thoughts after the first hour

I've started watching Chinese movies to brush up on my listening skills before I go study abroad in Beijing. Right now, I'm working my way through Eat Drink Man Woman, a '90s Taiwanese classic about a retired chef and his three daughters. I'm about halfway through, and it's already left me with some frustrating impressions.

First of all, the characters have started to bug me: why don't they communicate, instead of just talking? The second daughter, an airline executive, is about to be promoted and sent to Amsterdam. That evening, she goes to her somewhat-boyfriend's apartment, makes him a huge fancy dinner, and reminisces about learning to cook and how her father was so much nicer of a person when she was younger. The boyfriend tries to cheer her up by being silly, but she gets irritable. At that point, in the second daughter's place, I would have told him what was behind all this emotion. (Edit: She did tell him at some point, and then she tries to tell her family and gets cut off, and doesn't try again.)
The father doesn't communicate either. When the second daughter sees him in the hospital, in the cardio department, she's shocked and scared. He didn't tell anyone he was going in for a checkup, and she thinks something is seriously wrong.

My second impression is that the movie is about a conflict between tradition and modernity. The second daughter, especially, is torn between career advancement and making her own way on the one hand, and filial piety and keeping her father happy on the other. Then in the next scene, she complains to Lao Wen (a family friend) about how her father "exiled" her from the kitchen, where she could have become a master chef, and forced her to continue studying. Lao Wen tells her that her father did the right thing, to which she responds "Why did no one ever ask what I wanted?"
Simple answer: because that's not how things work. Even in 1990s Taiwan, the traditions of the mainland prevail at home. She should be glad women are allowed to be airline executives, and get the promotion she's likely to get! But again, the modern role her father wanted for her twenty years ago is conflicting with the traditional role he wants/needs now, and she's afraid of what he'll think of her moving away.

The pressures of modernity are also felt by the other two daughters, whose stories I've seen before in separate movies: the first daughter is a teacher receiving anonymous notes as a prank by her students, and the third is caught up in negotiations between her friend and the friend's ex, in a typical teenage romantic comedy of communication errors. However, they don't seem to be feeling the pressures of tradition as much, so the second daughter is the one with the most interesting story, and the one of the three that I'm most frustrated with.

The third impression I'm getting of this movie is not, in fact, a frustrating one: I'm understanding a lot more than I thought I would. They speak fast, and I rely heavily on the subtitles, but there are places I can tell what they're saying, and that it differs from the subtitles. Like they don't use the formal speech patterns I've been learning (though again, this is Taiwan, not the mainland), and like the scenes where the little girl (another family friend) calls the chef "Mr. Chu" in the subtitles. She's really saying "Zhu yeye" (Grandpa Chu). And that's linguistically neat, and she's cute, and her interactions with Grandpa Chu are a fun spot in a movie that has so far otherwise been quite emotionally heavy.

Perhaps I'll post more of my impressions after I finish the movie.

How literary genres resemble light cones: a followup to my last post

My theories about literary genre have run into opposition, on Facebook in other places. The big question people are challenging me with is: how can science fiction and fantasy be the same thing? While most of this opposition comes in pedantic forms (along the lines of "science is science, magic is magic"), I realize this is something I didn't explain completely in my last post; in addition, my understanding of exactly how fantasy and science fiction are the same thing has evolved.

Here's what I think now.

The difference between the chart I posted before and the one I'm about to show you works something like this picture on the right. This is a standard diagram of a light cone, something very important to relativistic physics. That's not the important part. What matters is that this diagram shows only one dimension of space and one of time. It simplifies a four-dimensional problem into a two-dimensional one.

That's what I did with my alignment chart: I simplified a three-dimensional arrangement into one dimension to make a point. Now I'm going to look at all three dimensions of genre/space, and disregard the dimension of narrative type/time, and give you a little more information that will--hopefully--clarify things.

Here's my new diagram. The genres in my last post (nonfiction, realistic, and fantastic) are areas on the Realism axis (left to right). The farther you get from the dot marked "Earth", the less like our reality it is. (Assuming the existence of an objective reality, of course). Once you leave the dot, you immediately start running into author bias, which is why history textbooks don't coincide with actual reality. Also notice that I've added a section on the chart for alternate history and future fiction, and that stories in this reality-genre can vary widely along the magic/science axis.

The magic/science axis (front to back) is what causes the apparent difference between fantasy and science fiction. This whole three-dimensional model came from my trying to construct a spectrum with "hard" science fiction at one end and "pure" fantasy at the other. Then I realized it would work better if I bent it into a U shape, with "hard" at one end and "soft" at the other. That's the up-and-down axis, and the towers at the fantastic end of the Realism axis are the ends of the U. At the top of the towers are books like The Silmarillion and The Star Wars Guide to Planets and Moons, which are essentially the nonfiction of a fantastic world, and thus as hard as you can get.

There's a sort of bridge connecting the towers; I've marked that and the "ground" between them Science Fantasy. This is the subgenre that leads me most definitely to the conclusion that science fiction and fantasy are alike if not the same; Diane Duane and other authors have combined the two so effortlessly that there has to be something there.

But that's just what I think. "And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now...you tell me what you know."

We Need New Genres: an alignment chart for literature

This semester I took a class called "Physics of Science Fiction." The professor is a science fiction writer...sort of. She tends to refer to science fiction, fantasy, and horror writing together in one breath. This got me thinking: how much difference is there between science fiction and fantasy?

The answer: not all that much. Don't believe me? Look at Eragon. Set aside the fact that it sucks and take a good long look at that winding derivative plot. What's it derivative of? What's it a direct copy of, besides having dragons instead of robots and spaceships, and magic instead of energy weapons? That's right.

I always knew Eragon was a ripoff of Star Wars, but suddenly that's a good thing. It proves that a story can be shifted from a science-fiction setting to a fantasy setting (and vice versa!) with nothing more than a redefinition of terms. If (to use a higher-quality example) the One Ring were a microcircuit cloaking device that leaked radioactivity, and Gollum paddled his little boat out between star systems, the Quest can end with both of them falling into a black hole just as easily as a pit of lava. I make no apologies to fans of Lord of the Rings. I consider myself one of you, and that makes the correspondence no less valid.

So we've established that science fiction and fantasy are allomorphs (allonarrative?), if not the same thing. This led me to the conclusion that genres as we define them today are at once fuzzy and nondescriptive, and too narrow. Here's what I want to do about it.

Three major genres of story exist: Nonfiction, Realistic Fiction, and Science Fantasy. Of course, I ran into a problem right here: where does alternate history go? After a long and edifying conversation with an interested friend (I'll call him HCE for the sake of the argument), I decided that depends on what causes the divergence from actual history. If it's something plausible, it's Realistic; if it's caused by time travel or aliens (Harry Turtledove, take note), it's Science Fantasy.

Of course, plausibility is more of a continuum (as HCE pointed out); however, genres are supposed to be definite categories, and so I will continue to work with this concept as if it did in fact have clearly defined categories.

Now we have three major genres; put those on the top of the alignment chart. Along the sides, put various types of narrative, and fill in the boxes with stories or types of stories that fit the combination. You get something that looks like this picture on the right.

Yes, I realize the only thing I could come up with for "Realistic Western" was Little House on the Prairie.

 I'd like suggestions for other narrative types to add to the chart, if you can come up with some, and stories that better fit each category.

A caveat: remember that it's more of a continuum than a set of boxes; you can still mix and match, but I encourage you to use these as starting points for writing your own stories. Hopefully this makes genres make more sense to you. DFTBA all!

Random things related to Doctor Who

I'm going to start by mentioning the erotic dream I had the other night involving David Tennant. All I remember at this point is that he was there, and probably naked, and definitely clean-shaven. Which he only seems to be IRL when he's playing a character. On talk shows and whatever he always has stubble. Which I don't find especially attractive; but it's still DAVID KRUTZING TENNANT. And I'm sure his wife likes it.

Something to speculate on: Why is it acceptable to fantasize about married celebrities, but not married people who aren't famous?

That, I may tackle some other time (or not at all). For now, I shall move on to music in Doctor Who.The Classic eras all seem to have distinctive music. I don't really pay attention to it, but there are some things I have noticed; for example, the Seventh Doctor serial "Remembrance of the Daleks" (best known for being the one where Ace beats up a Dalek with a baseball bat) has a soundtrack that would not be out of place in a discotheque.

As for the new series, I found nothing particularly distinctive in the Nine and Ten eras, besides the cool rock-ish sound to the second version of the opening theme, but Eleven's music has caught my attention. You know his action theme, I think it's called "I Am the Doctor." The one that plays in every single episode, yet never seems to get old. It's in 7/4 time, and I think that's what keeps it exciting. 7/4 is not quite two measures of common time per measure, and that difference is enough to keep it interesting, and rather light on its feet, which is good because the theme usually plays while people are running. "Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer" from the musical Cats has 7/4 sections which have a similar (but more comic) effect.

And speaking of the Eleventh Doctor, I want to know who in Belgium wrote that Wild West episode that's all over the Series 7 trailer! Amy seems so poorly written that I'm a little worried. "You've obviously been taking stupid lessons," she says to the Doctor while wildly waving a pistol around. Surely ordinary life hasn't changed her that much? There's no point in diminishing the character right before her heartbreaking exit. Whatever that's going to be.

Anyway, I shall move on for now, but before I do, here are two funny things I found this morning. One is someone's top 20 Classic Series quotes. I shall call your attention to number 6, which is the funniest thing I've ever heard Four say.

The other is this webcomic, The Daily Dalek. It isn't consistently funny, in my opinion, but it's fun.

Have a great day, and don't forget to be awesome!

May the odds be someday in your favor.

I will admit that I'm waiting to see The Hunger Games until summer vacation. I will also admit that I didn't want it to be made into a movie in the first place, because I was afraid that it, like so many movies before it, would glorify the physical and psychological violence described in its source material. But now I know better (at least, in theory), and will review the movie when I see it.

For now, though, something circulating on the internet has caught my attention. WHY IN KRUTZING BELGIUM'S NAME should it matter that Rue is black? Comments have apparently ranged from "not how I imagined her" to "her death didn't matter as much to me."

...I am speechless. Sure, I imagined Rue as pale and blonde, like lots of people did. But the important things to remember here are that 1) Movies DO NOT portray things the way people see them in their heads. Quite the opposite, in fact. In a few years no one will ever remember that they imagined Rue as white, because the cute little black girl will be the image of her that is everywhere.

And quite rightly, too. 2) Apparently there's a passage that all of us imaginers missed: Rue is described as having dark skin. So in this segregated world she should be played by a black girl if we're staying faithful to the book, which we are.

And yes, I said segregated. Reactions to the casting of black actors (Thresh, who comes from Rue's district, and Cinna, Katniss's chief stylist, as well) in The Hunger Games fit into the greater pattern here. I promised myself I wouldn't comment on Trayvon Martin's death, but I shall point out that both controversies stem from the same attitude: that people with darker skin are somehow suspect.

Notice also where the black characters come from: Rue and Thresh are from the same district, and are the only "dark-skinned" tributes. Does that make their district all black? Or all minority? Was this where Panem put them? What does that make Cinna? The son of a District 11 victor sold into sex slavery, as Finnick reveals he was in the third book? Panem is no better than its progenitor.

Or am I exaggerating? Was Cinna born white, and dyed his skin to go better with his gold eyeshadow? Are there other black, Hispanic, Asian, or otherwise minority characters? Extras, either in the Districts or the Capitol? (Don't count women; Panem preserves its gender balance quite carefully.) Will this look better when I see the movie?

Note on religion: 21st-century Deism

I've decided: I'm Jewish, but I'm mostly a Deist. Except not precisely.

For those of you who don't know or can't quite remember, Deism was the faith of choice for a lot of the great Enlightenment thinkers, including Thomas Jefferson. Its basic principle was that G-d created the universe, and then stepped back and let it run, like a huge clock. This was also soon after Newton and Kepler and other awesome people discovered that the universe runs on scientific and mathematical principles, and decided that the whole of the universe could be understood through science--including G-d.

Now it's the 21st century, and we know the universe is not as clear-cut as clockwork--we have relativity, quantum mechanics, and grand particle-smashing attempts to reconcile them. But Deism still works, albeit in a slightly different paradigm. I started with the idea that G-d could still be present, and act when needed--like winding the clock, or adjusting for the krutzed-up process that is Daylight Savings Time. (Maybe I'll rant about Daylight Savings time the next time I have to deal with it.) And this is what I ended up with.

Imagine the universe as a computer, instead of a clock. G-d made it, or at least took it out of the box, put it together, booted it up, and wrote some programs. Now he stands back and lets it run. Occasionally he gives the world input, and gets results back. Sometimes quantum fluctuations affect the data. And once in a while, enough of the little particles of energy that are people in this universe get together that they can send out a little alert to the User, telling him to check on us.

In spite of all these differences, there is one big thing that connects 21st-century Deism to 18th-century Deism: central to both is the belief that the universe has internal logic, a logic that we humans may someday understand, if we keep working at it.

Miracles: One size doesn't fit all

Last night I went to Hillel for Shabbat services for the first time in more than a month. I'm kind of embarrassed to say so, but I think it's important, because I wouldn't have made the mental leap I did if I'd seen the text every Friday for the last full semester.
In the middle of the service there's a section called the Amidah, which you say while standing, and often silently. Yesterday, while reading it to myself, I noticed something for the first time that struck me. At the bottom of one page of the siddur (prayer book, for all you goyim reading this) is a short prayer, about a line and a half, expressing our (cultural and theoretical--I'll get into that later) longing for G-d to "return to Zion." By this, I'm pretty sure it means the coming of the Messiah. Then I turned the page and started reading the much longer prayer thanking G-d for little everyday miracles.
Wait, what?
The coming of the Messiah is about the biggest possible miracle ever, and it gets a line and a half. The prayer for small miracles is seven lines in the English translation. Now. Nothing in Scripture is there by accident; it's all been put there by the writers (in this case, the medieval rabbis who compiled the service) for a reason. So what's the reason?

As far as I can tell, the order was intended to remind us to focus on the small things. Then as now, people tend to dwell on the possibility of something big happening: a natural disaster, a war victory, divine judgment. That second prayer tells us that little everyday miracles--events as common as sunrises and family movie nights--are just as miraculous as the coming of the Messiah.
It baffles me that I never hear this second prayer recited in Reform versions of the service. Not hearing the first one makes sense, since the Reform and other more secular movements in Judaism tend not to believe that the Messiah will come in a blaze of glory and make everything better for the faithful. But shouldn't disbelieving the greatest possible miracle make all the smaller ones that much more important?

The history of science is WHOA

Today I led a discussion in my Honors class about Copernicus, focusing on how he presented his work. Most of it centered on how thoroughly he covered his butt in presenting his then-controversial idea that the earth revolved around the sun. "Buy, read, and enjoy," anyone? To quote William Hartnell, "Sheer poetry!"
But the best part happened before class, when I had an epiphany and tried to explain it to a biology major who was polite enough to tell me it worked. My idea was this: the history of science is cyclical.

Take evolution, for example: in high school biology, I learned about a guy named Lamarck, who thought that animals could pass on acquired characteristics to their offspring (for example, a man who works out a lot will have children who are more muscular). By the time I learned this, however, Lamarck had been pretty thoroughly debunked; all I really learned was that Lamarck was wrong; end of story. Last month, though, I learned about a relatively fresh topic in biology: epigenetics (SciShow video here). In a nutshell, you can pass certain acquired genetic markers on to your offspring. (But please watch the video; Hank Green makes it much more fun than that.)
So Lamarck was right, but at a level that didn't exist when he came up with his theory. Meanwhile, his ideas had been discredited, discarded, then come back to and found to make sense in a new paradigm.

This has happened in physics too: look at our model of the atom. Once upon a time, it was a "plum pudding" with negatively charged electrons suspended in a cloud of positive charge. Then this was thrown out completely in favor of the Bohr model, which resembles the solar system: positively-charged nucleus orbited by electrons. Now the cloud-type model is favored again, but in reverse: quantum theory requires the atom to be a nucleus in a cloud of negative charge. That's pretty awesome.

I can even, though this may be a stretch, tie this back to Copernicus: he began the revolution that moved the Earth away from its comfortable stationary place at the center of the universe. For centuries we thought that was that, because it made mathematical sense. Then Einstein came along, and discovered that relativistic equations require a frame of reference that is stationary from the point of view of the observer. For most of us, this is the surface of the earth, in relation to trains, spaceships, the tops of buildings, etc. So once again, the earth can be considered stationary when it needs to be.

And you know what? This is why I love my liberal education. It allows me to step outside the boundary of any one discipline, and see the patterns that run through everything. History repeats itself, and all I can say is whoa.
DFTBA y'all!