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.