Kal-El-mas Eve 2010

Another year, another Christmas Eve family get-together. All the insanity that I’ve grown used to over the years, despite one of my aunts making an attempt to keep us all organized and to keep the chaos to a minimum. 

Aunt D: “Okay, now everyone calm down, and let’s all be patient.”

J (sister): [Laughs]

Me: “You do realize that we’re crazy every year, right?”

Aunt D: “Yes, but this time, 95% of us are adults.”

That didn’t work out as well as she expected. She didn’t make that much of an effort, either. Things started off sort of orderly with everyone in the room getting a gift from the same person, and all of us opening them one by one, and then proceeded to devolve into chaos. People started talking over each other, and weren’t waiting until everyone got gifts to open the one they’d just been handed – so, business as usual at my Grandma’s house on Christmas Eve.

 

Despite not getting what I was looking forward to (and had been led to expect), I still had a good time appreciating my family’s insanity, and being thankful for the gifts that I did get. And as far as I’m concerned, I had a pretty good haul this year: a DVD player (which I’ll be letting my mother use, so I can take my PS2 back from her), an amazingly comfortable robe (or is it ‘housecoat’ when it’s a ‘man-robe’), pajama pants, black slippers, a box of five different kinds of hot sauces from boring jalapeño to a yummy habanero (which I’ve gotten three years in a row now, and enjoy), a nice button-down shirt, and a gorgeous wolf-themed knife.

 

The wolf knife is one that I’ll have to put up a picture of, when I can get one. The aunt that bought it never asks most of us what we want for Christmas, but as far as I’m concerned, always buys some of the coolest shit. A couple years ago, it was a collection of small wolf sculptures of varying colors, with tribal designs on them. Last year, it was a wool wolf blanket.

 

This year, the knife she got has a handle made to look kind of like bone, with a metal-etched wolf set into the center of the handle, and a wolves-in-the-snow scene painted on the blade in a great-looking set of metallic paints. It’s probably the coolest thing I’ve gotten from her, ever since she found out that I really love wolves and eagles. Before that, she used to get just random cool stuff, and a package of socks. I kind of wish that she still got socks, because they’re always disappearing. And they’re not nearly as pleasant to replace when it’s your own money paying for them.

 

So, how was everyone’s Christmas this year? Or if your family hasn’t had their Christmas get-together yet, what are you expecting? Any funny things that usually happen? Or any gifts that you’re reeeeally looking forward to? Let’s hear it!

 

And lastly, merry Kal-El-mas.

Nerdery is hereditary; Parents (and guardians) get it from their children

If you read my main site, you probably saw my post on Thursday morning talking about the new Earth-like (and likely inhabited) planet, Gliese 581g. In it, I go for some humor by proclaiming it to be Krypton, and declaring that “the Superman” will eventually come along.

 

I decided to have a little fun with it after that, too. When I thought that someone that I knew offline would find it funny, I told them, with a little bit more excitement and humor in that rendition. A few of these people read my site, and were already aware of my crazy idea, but one person guessed before I got to the end of it: my grandma.

 

Keep in mind that this woman is 60 years old and is not a nerd. She raised me, and used to think my oddities were ridiculous, and has slowly gotten more reasonable with time. I didn’t realize that the reason she was getting more accepting of my nerdiness was because it was turning her into a nerd! NERD is like a set of radioactive waves, mutating those around the nerds!

 

ME: This planet is Earth-like, but bigger. It’s in a constellation visible from Earth. And since it’s very likely inhabited, the would-be aliens would call their red star a sun…

GRANDMA: Isn’t that like where Superman is from?

 

I have never been so proud of this old woman. NERDS REPRESENT! :D

loneliness + alienation + fear + despair + self-worth ÷ mockery ÷ condemnation ÷ misunderstanding x guilt x shame x failure x judgment n=y where y=hope and n=folly, love=lies, life=death, self=dark side

Awesome text of awesomeness, or: Why I’m in a great mood

For years now, I’ve been a fan of Terry Brooks’ writing, starting with The Sword of Shannara, which I read… way back when I was still in the single-digit ages, I think. If I had to say for sure, I’d say probably around age eight or nine.

 

Quite a few months ago, my awesome friend Crystal notified me of a book signing that Brooks was having in Seattle, at the UW bookstore. To further emphasize her awesomeness, I should mention that I live in a small town a few hours away from Seattle, and she also worked out a ride for me with her mother, who was coming up for the signing, too.

 

We had to wait for Crystal to get off work, so we were a tiiiiiny bit late to the signing. When we got there and found some seating, Brooks was reading from his most recent book, before launching in to a Q-and-A session. I was lucky, and one of the last people who was able to ask a question. I don’t remember right off the top of my head what my question was, only what it involved: a staff that has appeared in one series in a major way, and in another series in a much more diminished capacity in the primary series. Fans will know that both series are, as of the last few years, connected and part of the same overall story, hence my curiosity about the staff.

 

Now, we can fast-forward to the other night at work. I was having a pretty rotten day on Thursday, having gone to court as support for my mother, in regards to my stepdad’s estate (loooong story there). That had taken all day, and was very emotionally-stressing, so I didn’t even get to sleep before work. I was in a foul mood, and then I got this text:

“Omg new book on the 24th :) and signing at the U bookstore and the title is about the staff that you asked about!!!”

To say that I had a jaw-drop reaction would be an understatement. I’m not entirely sure that my jaw didn’t travel all the way to the core of the damn planet. The answer that I’d gotten on the staff question was sort of a non-answer, and if I remember right, Mr. Brooks almost acted like he hadn’t even realized the connection. With this title now known to me, I figure that he was just not wanting to say too much.

 

Regardless, I’d like to live in my own fantasy world where my question caused Mr. Brooks to consider devoting more thought to the staff, while I eagerly await the 24th, so that I can read Bearers of the Black Staff that I had a hand in naming – nay, that I had a hand in creating*. (Not really, but hey, that’s why it’s my fantasy world.)

 

 

Why I love Doctor Who

And subsequently, why I’m developing a man-crush/writer-hero in Steven Moffat.

He gets me. :D

Some of you don’t watch Doctor Who, so I’ll explain a little bit more…. Saturday was the fifth-season finale of the revived Doctor Who series, titled “The Big Bang”. I won’t spoil that episode, but I’ll spoil the one before it – just a little bit.

5x12 - THE PANDORICA OPENS

The few times that it’s been mentioned this season, the Pandorica has been described as a prison that the Doctor believes to be a fairytale. The prison was for a “warrior, or a trickster” who couldn’t be reasoned with or stopped, and would just drop in and wreck your world.

Fans were correct in figuring out that this meant The Doctor, but they were wrong in thinking that he would already be in there. Instead, an alliance of his worst enemies – Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans, Judoon, and a lot more – were there to seal him in to the device, in a twisted plan to save the universe.

Irony fucked them (hard) and, by locking him up, they actually set the universe to the destruction that they’d thought the Doctor would cause. Auton-Rory is there, holding the deceased Amy and mourning the universe’s demise, when the Doctor arrives out of nowhere, with River Song’s vortex manipulator.

…

But the Doctor was locked in the box. The inescapable prison designed specifically to hold him. The Pandorica. How is he here, when he’s there? And more importantly, where did that fez come from?

Turns out that this is a Doctor from the future, although fairly recent in his own future, but quite a ways away in Rory’s. He gives Rory the sonic screwdriver and tells him how to free him, and to put the sonic screwdriver into Amy’s coat pocket when he’s done doing that.

The Doctor is freed from the Pandorica because Rory freed him, and he went to the future, and then came back into the past to tell Rory how to free him. He’s free because he told Rory how to free him, with the knowledge seemingly coming from no original point of it’s own.

Less than five minutes in, Steven Moffat plays with ontological paradoxes.

THAT is why I love this show. Thank you, Steven Moffat.

Two really nerdy things (that I love)

Time travel paradoxes

I can remember being ten years old and THRILLED with the very concept of time travel.

At the time I had no knowledge of the series I would come to love, Doctor Who, but I was in love with the idea of time travel anyway.

 

I would always imagine me and friends time-traveling to various eras, some in the future, some in the past. Sometimes, it would even be either myself or my friends who helped discover how to travel through time, dreams that weren’t helped by my love of science fiction.

 

When I got older, and got interested in more complex sci-fi, I started to learn more about time travel paradoxes, and just like when I was a kid, I’m still thrilled. I love reading about examples of said paradoxes in fiction, thinking about ways that could avert them, etc.

 

Morphic resonance

This one’s a little more recent, and by that, I mean within the last few days. I just finished re-reading the amazing comic book series known as ‘Y! The Last Man’, but this time, I decided to pull up a little research.

 

In the series, all of the male mammals on the earth die simultaneously, with no direct reason given in the series. One of the themes in the second half of the series is ‘morphic resonance’, mentioned first in a flashback scene and later as a possible cause for the “gendercide”.

 

What it boils down to is the theory that there is a field within and around every living thing that organizes it’s characteristics and patterns of activity. Morphic resonance is sort of a feedback between these morphic units, and a great example is given in the comic series – an experiment in which animals on one island were taught something, and once they’d had it down to the point of perfection, it was found that animals of the same species on another island had developed the same skill without having been taught by an external source.

 

That’s probably inaccurate to the way the story is told in the comic, but hey, shit happens. I’m not perfect. The point is that the idea of beings and things being able to be connected and develop in that sort of manner is really interesting. If correct, it’s a form of adaptive evolution, and fun stuff aside. :)