words, words, words...
Jun. 4th, 2009 08:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivendellroseReply to this post by yelling "Words". I'll pick five words that I associate with you. Post to your journal about those words and get your friends to do the same.
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beam_oflight gave me: "Writing, Anthropology, Feminist, Podcasts annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd Doctor Who :)"
Writing: To be awfully stereotypical (but true!) I can't remember a time when making up stories or bits of stories wasn't my primary pass-time - I just never bothered to write them down seriously until sometime in middle school or so. At which point I wrote all the classic Mary-Sue type stories that I think every teenager has to write at some point... I was just very lucky in that most of mine happened and were out of my system before I'd discovered the internet. ;) If I accomplish nothing else artistically in my life but managing to write one single novel that meets with my own approval as a decent piece of finished work, I'll be happy. Everything up to that is me grinding myself against the universe and hoping I eventually sharpen up into a good writer. I need to be less haphazard about it, though, and I sure as hell need to be more dedicated, if I'm ever going to hit my goals.
Anthropology: I don't know what it is, but from the time I was a teeny baby-geek, I've always been fascinated by culture and cultures. I think it's reasonable to blame sci-fi - all those fun and interesting aliens with all sorts of strange alien cultures! ...Most of which turn out to not be nearly strange or interesting enough once one really starts to know the depth and breadth of possibility even just in Human society. But hey, it's still fun.
The other side of this coin is that while I'm deeply interested in historical and pre-historical periods and cultures, I learned pretty quickly that the details of daily life, family, culture and, yes, women's experience, are generally not to be found in standard history. Those are the things you can learn in anthropology, if you work at it. Which brings me to...
Feminist: So, I had this friend in high school. Great guy, funny, nice, and Facebook tells me that one of my then-best-friends ended up marrying him, after they dated through high school and college. Good for them. But when we were all taking senior-year AP English together, he went off on this wounded, butthurt tirade about how, woe, why was our teacher making us spend a whole month reading books by women? Why did we have to read Kate Chopin's The Awakening and Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein? It was so unfair!
And I wanted to slap him.
I can't remember what I said at the time, but if I had it to do over again, I would have taken out our reading lists for that year and the four prior to that, and gone through and highlighted every damned book that we'd read in four years of English classes that had been written by a woman. And you know what? I don't think I'd have gotten further than five. In fact, I'm not sure I'd have gotten to four. Don't get me wrong, I didn't much like The Awakening, either, and I definitely prefer Shakespeare to Virginia Woolf, but that's not the point. The point is that he could get all angry and defensive and whine about having to read women authors for a fricking month while us girls had spent 95% of the last twelve years reading male authors.
I'm pretty sure that's not actually why I'm a feminist, but it's as good an anecdote as any for how I am, if that makes any sense. I used to say that I didn't consider myself a feminist, I considered myself an equalist. Then I realized that the only reason I was saying that was so that I wouldn't scare guys like my high school guy-friend, who called feminist feminazis. And I realized that yeah, I'm for equality... but it's never going to get there if there aren't women willing to stand up and say "we are not there yet." So, there you go - feminist.
Podcasts: So, my job is coding. Coding and Photoshop, and sometimes Adobe Flash. And it's a good job... but I need something else going on in my head, you know? So that I don't faze out completely and stop paying attention to what I'm doing. Or get really bored. Anyway! Music is great and all, and audio books are fun if I can find the ones that exactly straddle the line between "interesting" and "not so interesting that I get totally distracted." And then there's podcasts. I can keep up on the news and science and interesting discussions and stuff... all while I'm working! It's brilliant!
In the interest of sharing, here's a few of my favorites, all weekly unless otherwise noted:
The Naked Scientists! Run out of Cambridge University, this is a fun, fast-paced, accessible-but-still-interesting science podcast that generally seems to manage to have something for everybody. They even have a side podcast that comes out monthly, The Naked Archaeologist. Same format, same lively attitude, but all about archaeology!
The News Quiz! BBC Radio 4 program that switches off with The Now Show, which I am currently missing very deeply. Both are brilliant. ♥
The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe! In their own words: The Skeptics Guide to the Universe is a weekly Science podcast produced by the New England Skeptical Society (NESS) in association with the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) : discussing the latest news and topics from the world of the paranormal, fringe science, and controversial claims from a scientific point of view. They're insightful, they're funny, and, fair warning, they're often more than a bit irreverent.
Speaking of irreverent, there's also: The Bugle! Totally irreverent and occasionally downright bizarre comedy news show with John Oliver (of the Daily Show) and Andy Zaltzman.
Oh, and there's also BBC Doctor Who commentaries that get podcasted whenever they're available. If you do get them, for goodness' sake save them. Don't be stupid like I was last year and assume they'll be the same commentaries as on the DVDs because they aren't. I shall now forever regret not saving the commentary of one of the episodes last season that had David Tennant, Russell T Davies, and Stephen Moffat all geeking like only geeky geekboys can, including the fantastic moment when, re: Moffat and Davies plotting evilly at each other, David said "I feel like I'm in the High Council of Gallifrey," and Davies (or possibly Moffat, I forget which) said, "Which one of us is Braxiatel?" or something like that. I don't remember the exact words because, oh yeah, I'm an idiot and I didn't save it, and it wasn't on the DVD! Ahem. Anyway, moral of the story, save your podcasts if you think they might be something you'll want to hear later. And if anybody has that one, I will love you forever if you give it to me.
And, of course, Doctor Who: The only thing I can think of to say about this is that I find it really hard to believe I've only been watching this show for, what? Two and a half years? Absolutely mind-boggling, considering how thoroughly it's become part of the way I think, part of how I conceptualize things, and so on. K and I used to joke a lot about how silly it was that we have nostalgia for a show that neither of us ever really saw as kids - and at least she had the excuse of seeing it once or twice! Anyway, I have a feeling that the fandom, if not the show, is coming up on a rough patch what with the changeover in the production team, the switching from Tennant to Smith, and so on, but the great thing about Doctor Who is that we have 40 years of history to look back on and think... well, we've been here before. And it could be worse. It could always be worse.
....Holy shit. For the record, it's been in the high 80s F here recently, which is unseasonably hot for Seattle... and just while I was writing this it clouded up and started whistling with all sorts of wind. Here's hoping that a summer thunderstorm is in the offing!
beam_oflight gave me: "Writing, Anthropology, Feminist, Podcasts annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd Doctor Who :)"Writing: To be awfully stereotypical (but true!) I can't remember a time when making up stories or bits of stories wasn't my primary pass-time - I just never bothered to write them down seriously until sometime in middle school or so. At which point I wrote all the classic Mary-Sue type stories that I think every teenager has to write at some point... I was just very lucky in that most of mine happened and were out of my system before I'd discovered the internet. ;) If I accomplish nothing else artistically in my life but managing to write one single novel that meets with my own approval as a decent piece of finished work, I'll be happy. Everything up to that is me grinding myself against the universe and hoping I eventually sharpen up into a good writer. I need to be less haphazard about it, though, and I sure as hell need to be more dedicated, if I'm ever going to hit my goals.
Anthropology: I don't know what it is, but from the time I was a teeny baby-geek, I've always been fascinated by culture and cultures. I think it's reasonable to blame sci-fi - all those fun and interesting aliens with all sorts of strange alien cultures! ...Most of which turn out to not be nearly strange or interesting enough once one really starts to know the depth and breadth of possibility even just in Human society. But hey, it's still fun.
The other side of this coin is that while I'm deeply interested in historical and pre-historical periods and cultures, I learned pretty quickly that the details of daily life, family, culture and, yes, women's experience, are generally not to be found in standard history. Those are the things you can learn in anthropology, if you work at it. Which brings me to...
Feminist: So, I had this friend in high school. Great guy, funny, nice, and Facebook tells me that one of my then-best-friends ended up marrying him, after they dated through high school and college. Good for them. But when we were all taking senior-year AP English together, he went off on this wounded, butthurt tirade about how, woe, why was our teacher making us spend a whole month reading books by women? Why did we have to read Kate Chopin's The Awakening and Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein? It was so unfair!
And I wanted to slap him.
I can't remember what I said at the time, but if I had it to do over again, I would have taken out our reading lists for that year and the four prior to that, and gone through and highlighted every damned book that we'd read in four years of English classes that had been written by a woman. And you know what? I don't think I'd have gotten further than five. In fact, I'm not sure I'd have gotten to four. Don't get me wrong, I didn't much like The Awakening, either, and I definitely prefer Shakespeare to Virginia Woolf, but that's not the point. The point is that he could get all angry and defensive and whine about having to read women authors for a fricking month while us girls had spent 95% of the last twelve years reading male authors.
I'm pretty sure that's not actually why I'm a feminist, but it's as good an anecdote as any for how I am, if that makes any sense. I used to say that I didn't consider myself a feminist, I considered myself an equalist. Then I realized that the only reason I was saying that was so that I wouldn't scare guys like my high school guy-friend, who called feminist feminazis. And I realized that yeah, I'm for equality... but it's never going to get there if there aren't women willing to stand up and say "we are not there yet." So, there you go - feminist.
Podcasts: So, my job is coding. Coding and Photoshop, and sometimes Adobe Flash. And it's a good job... but I need something else going on in my head, you know? So that I don't faze out completely and stop paying attention to what I'm doing. Or get really bored. Anyway! Music is great and all, and audio books are fun if I can find the ones that exactly straddle the line between "interesting" and "not so interesting that I get totally distracted." And then there's podcasts. I can keep up on the news and science and interesting discussions and stuff... all while I'm working! It's brilliant!
In the interest of sharing, here's a few of my favorites, all weekly unless otherwise noted:
The Naked Scientists! Run out of Cambridge University, this is a fun, fast-paced, accessible-but-still-interesting science podcast that generally seems to manage to have something for everybody. They even have a side podcast that comes out monthly, The Naked Archaeologist. Same format, same lively attitude, but all about archaeology!
The News Quiz! BBC Radio 4 program that switches off with The Now Show, which I am currently missing very deeply. Both are brilliant. ♥
The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe! In their own words: The Skeptics Guide to the Universe is a weekly Science podcast produced by the New England Skeptical Society (NESS) in association with the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) : discussing the latest news and topics from the world of the paranormal, fringe science, and controversial claims from a scientific point of view. They're insightful, they're funny, and, fair warning, they're often more than a bit irreverent.
Speaking of irreverent, there's also: The Bugle! Totally irreverent and occasionally downright bizarre comedy news show with John Oliver (of the Daily Show) and Andy Zaltzman.
Oh, and there's also BBC Doctor Who commentaries that get podcasted whenever they're available. If you do get them, for goodness' sake save them. Don't be stupid like I was last year and assume they'll be the same commentaries as on the DVDs because they aren't. I shall now forever regret not saving the commentary of one of the episodes last season that had David Tennant, Russell T Davies, and Stephen Moffat all geeking like only geeky geekboys can, including the fantastic moment when, re: Moffat and Davies plotting evilly at each other, David said "I feel like I'm in the High Council of Gallifrey," and Davies (or possibly Moffat, I forget which) said, "Which one of us is Braxiatel?" or something like that. I don't remember the exact words because, oh yeah, I'm an idiot and I didn't save it, and it wasn't on the DVD! Ahem. Anyway, moral of the story, save your podcasts if you think they might be something you'll want to hear later. And if anybody has that one, I will love you forever if you give it to me.
And, of course, Doctor Who: The only thing I can think of to say about this is that I find it really hard to believe I've only been watching this show for, what? Two and a half years? Absolutely mind-boggling, considering how thoroughly it's become part of the way I think, part of how I conceptualize things, and so on. K and I used to joke a lot about how silly it was that we have nostalgia for a show that neither of us ever really saw as kids - and at least she had the excuse of seeing it once or twice! Anyway, I have a feeling that the fandom, if not the show, is coming up on a rough patch what with the changeover in the production team, the switching from Tennant to Smith, and so on, but the great thing about Doctor Who is that we have 40 years of history to look back on and think... well, we've been here before. And it could be worse. It could always be worse.
....Holy shit. For the record, it's been in the high 80s F here recently, which is unseasonably hot for Seattle... and just while I was writing this it clouded up and started whistling with all sorts of wind. Here's hoping that a summer thunderstorm is in the offing!
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no subject
Date: 2009-06-05 04:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-05 04:17 am (UTC)Coyote, Winnie the Pooh (...that's all one word, right?), Ashland, Torchwood and, inspired by the moment, weather.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-05 04:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-05 04:35 am (UTC)And, of course, words!
no subject
Date: 2009-06-05 05:20 am (UTC)And man, I am hoping for a thunderstorm so hard.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-05 08:34 pm (UTC)Um... words. Let's see.
I am compelled to say "fish," because your username has always amused me. Also, um, books, weather, writing, and... Supernatural. Because I don't quite get that whole phenomenon.
Also, yay, you're back to posting on LJ! I missed you! ♥
no subject
Date: 2009-06-05 02:41 pm (UTC)Gah, the book thing. Related
no subject
Date: 2009-06-05 08:32 pm (UTC)Ohhhh, the "boys couldn't possibly identify with female characters so we must pander to them and make everything about them because girls are used to having to read/watch/play about boys if they want anything except Barbie!" argument. That one makes me so freaking angry. And we wonder why some men can't seem to figure out how girls think, or even treat them like people. *Headdesk*
no subject
Date: 2009-06-05 03:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-05 08:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-08 11:22 am (UTC)