Obligatory Holiday Post

Click to enlarge

As the end of the year quickly approaches, I decided to make another graph for you, Imaginary Readers, to illustrate how I think about years. It shows stress as a function of time, and it clearly depicts the year as a periodic function with a period of roughly a semester. The school year is just the calendar year phase shifted by negative three months, roughly. This is important, because even though 2011 is about to end, I am in the middle of the school year, so it doesn't feel like a new year; it just feels like a new semester.

It's difficult to think of the past year as anything more than the past semester, which was the best/worst semester so far, but it was more than that, because this past year also included the previous semester and May Term and the summer (yes, I did just define a year). A lot happened, and I know that this past year was pretty good, overall, but the way the school year is structured makes it difficult for me to view December as the end of the year. I am so entrenched in the academic system right now, that the semester seems to be the only possible organizational structure that matters, at least is matters much more to me right now than an arbitrary dating system that doesn't make much sense anyways. (I think they could have come up with a better calendar system than just picking how many days will be in a month seemingly at random. Some months have 30 days, others 31, but they don't perfectly alternate, and February can't decide if it wants to be weirdly short or just really short.)

So, on that note, here I am at the end of another semester. A lot happened in the past four months, both personally and academically, the details of which I will not bore you with in this post, Imaginary Readers, because you probably already know them (I am going to stop whining about that now, promise). And now it's the holidays, which are good, if somewhat of a family overload, after which comes the better part of a month which I have historically spent bored and wanting to go back to school, because at school I have things to do and people to do them with, which, not counting my family, I don't have at home. I don't want this year's break to be like breaks have been in the past where I spend it sitting at home feeling sorry for myself, because that's boring and I'm done feeling sorry for myself. After the New Year, I do have some stuff to occupy myself with: people who are still in town and my research. I just have to get through the rest of this week without imploding from boredom. At least my family got a kitten a couple of months ago whom I can play with. Because kittens really do make everything better.

Cell Bio Win!

This is what happens in every one of your cells all of the time! This is exactly why the biological sciences are so awesome!

The full version of this is eight minutes, but for your sake, Imaginary Readers, I only posted the three minute version. If you like it, you should go YouTube the full version, because it is epically awesome.

Oh! The Places I've Been

Stuck in a Lurch

When I was in ninth grade, I copied out the full text of Dr. Seuss' Oh! The Places You'll Go, and I've carried it in my wallet ever since. After the better part of five years, it's a little worse for wear, but I still have it with me. It's my favorite book, out of everything I've read (which isn't saying much: I have read quite a few Star Trek novels, which are not known for their quality), because it's about life, in a really concise, rhyming way. Ultimately, it has a hopeful message, but it doesn't pull punches, which I think is why I like it so much. 

For a long time, my favorite line from it was possibly the most depressing passage in the entire thing:

I’m afraid that some times you’ll play lonely games too. Games you can’t win ‘cause you’ll play against you. All Alone! Whether you like it or not, Alone will be something you’ll be quite a lot.

I can't tell you how many notebook pages I covered with those lines in high school. The sentiment of it really resonated with me at the time, and to a certain extent still does, because I have always been aware of my issues with feeling my feelings, and because I didn't have anyone in my life who I was willing to really try to be close to, I spent a lot of time feeling really isolated and alone. It was comforting to me for someone (Dr. Seuss) to tell me that was okay; that maybe I wasn't as different from everyone else as it seemed. But that was just an excuse, in a way, to not deal with the things that were making me feel so isolated; the things that I'm just starting to deal with now. Because it was so much easier not to deal with my issues; to not get close to people, and just continue on by myself, like I always had.

I have this very clear memory of being about eleven or twelve years old and thinking that I was probably gay, but then deciding not to deal with it, not to figure out what that meant, and who I was at that time. And then I proceeded not to continue not dealing with it for several years, until I consciously could not allow myself to no longer deal with it, and I had to admit it to myself. I think that was the moment that I stopped dealing with my feelings, when I started suppressing everything and always being okay, even when I wasn't. Because in that moment, I made the conscious decision to not deal with something fairly important because it was easier not to, and once the precedent was set, it was so much more difficult to go back and unravel the mess that I had made than to continue to not deal with things. I took the easy way out, and it worked for a long time, because I had nothing else so big to deal with that I couldn't just pretend to be okay, and I got really good at pretending to be okay.

And now I'm finally starting to deal with my feelings, and going back and cleaning up some of the mess I made, to the extent that I can. But the only reason I'm doing so now is that I've finally had things happen that have made me realize that I can't go on not dealing with things. I want to be friends with [Львица], I am friends with her, but I don't want it to be weird, what with everything that's happened, which means that I have to work through all of my feelings for her and about what happened. I know that if I don't, if I just pretend like everything's fine, my usual modus operandi, I will lose her completely, because I won't be able to really be friends, I'll just pine for her and that's not good for anyone. I want to be able to look her in the eye and honestly tell her that I'm okay, with all of it, and with everything that happened. I want to be able to see her in that dress without it making me feel weird for the rest of the night, and then feel bad about feeling weird. I don't want the fact that we dated for a bit to define my relationship with her, because it is so much more than that to me. 

And so, attempt to deal with it I have, and am, even though I have no idea what I'm doing. It's difficult for me to reconcile the inherently irrational nature of emotions with the part of me that needs a rational explanation for everything. I've been trying to let myself to really experience my feelings, and not try to suppress them, and I've been trying to talk to people about it, and I have talked to [Totally A Cat] some, as well as [Keeper of All Knowledge] and [Fuckin' Magnets], which is a really big deal for me, given that I normally never talk about my feelings with anyone.

And it is helping, I think. The past couple of weeks have been better. I've been feeling more like myself, and the ratio of good days to bad days has greatly increased. I know that time heals all wounds and all that, but I'm trying to prevent the build up of scar tissue in this case. I am trying to be a mature, functioning adult about this, and behaving the same way as I did when I was twelve when presented with something that scares me and is difficult to deal with is not the way to accomplish that particular goal. I'm attempting to use this whole thing to grow as a person (like a plant), but that just complicates things because I'm only just realizing what a mess I've made for myself. I feel kind of lost, like I have no idea what I've gotten myself into, or how I'm going to sort it all out. Once again, Dr. Seuss says it much more articulately (and much more rhyme-y) than I can:

 You will come to a place where the streets are not marked. Some windows are lighted. But mostly they’re darked. A place you could sprain both your elbow and chin! Do you dare to stay out? Do you dare to go in? How much can you lose? How much can you win?

I'm out of my depth with this whole dealing with my emotions thing, but I know, or at least I hope, that will change as I get more comfortable with it. In many ways I'm still twelve, because I haven't really emotionally matured since then, so I've got a lot of catching up to do, and I'm trying to cram it all into a couple of weeks and expecting it to work like that. I have so many awesome people in my life right now, and I feel like I owe it to them to get my shit sorted out and not wallow in my pain or pine after something that's not going to happen, so that is what I'm trying to do. It's just been more difficult than I anticipated. But I'm trying not to let that deter me.

Comic Book Wednesday: Nerd Culture

This article has been making the rounds recently (I qualify seeing two people link to it on Facebook as making the rounds), and for those of you who didn't read it, it's about male privilege in nerd culture and why it's a bad thing for geeky girls. The author makes some good points about how the geek culture caters nearly exclusively to men, particularly in the comics and videogame sectors.

I've already discussed my feeling on the portrayal of women in comics, which relies on arguments that the article dismisses as products of male privilege, which does have some merit, but I still think that comics are a business, and should not be vilified by for catering to their primary audience.

Anyways, my feelings about female comic book characters aside, the main gist of the article is that many women are alienated by the geek/nerd community because they are treated differently, and often weirdly, by the community because they are girls in a traditionally male only space. This is a fair point, and his arguments about why this is a bad thing are pretty solid.

I found this whole issue somewhat interesting, because while I know it's true to a great extent, it is fairly far removed from my experience in the nerd community as a female comic book fan (if you didn't get that by now, Imaginary Readers, you have obviously been skipping Comic Book Wednesdays, for shame, I am currently shaking my head disapprovingly at you). Only one on occasion have I ever felt like I was treated differently because I'm a girl at a comic book shop, and that only entailed a guy assuming I was buying manga rather than mainstream American comics because I was a teenage girl. I wasn't particularly offended by this assumption, because it seemed to me that The Source's extensive manga collection was what drew in most of their teenage girl clientele. Maybe that was my own concession to male privilege, but it does seem to me like making an assumption based on observed patterns is not necessarily sexist, it's just pattern recognition.

It is true that most times I have been in a comic shop, I've been the only girl there, also, very often the only person under 40, but it's never bothered me. Granted, I've never been totally immersed in the culture, as my interest in comics seems to follow a sinusoidal pattern with a period of about 2 years. And The Source, the store where I've primarily gotten my comics, is a mixed comics and games shop, so it serves a more diverse clientele than say, Big Brain, the exclusively comic book store I pull from when I'm at school, where I've only ever seen one other human being aside from the guy behind the counter.

I can't honestly say the male privilege isn't a problem in the nerd community, it's just something that I've never really experienced (at least to my knowledge; I'm not the most perceptive person). You should definitely read the article, because, if nothing else, it's food for thought.

Greeting Seasons

It's December, Imaginary Readers, and it has been for a couple of days now, much to my confusion, because in my head it was just Halloween. And, as always, with the start of December, winter decided to rear its head. Actually, winter was a little late in coming this year, with only one meager snow fall in November, and it actually being temperate on Thanksgiving. Usually, it's solidly winter about half way through November, but not so this year, as it didn't really get cold (below 25 F (or -4 C)) until this week.

It's rarely actually this pretty. Snow in the city is mostly just gross (via)

I have mixed feelings about the winter. It is infinitely better than the summer, which is mostly due to my intolerance of heat and humidity which make me feel claustrophobic and irritable. I like the cold weather and I love it when it snows, because walking during a snow fall is just plain magical, but winter does get a bit long for me. December is great, and it should be snowy and cold on Christmas, because there do need to be some benefits to living in Minnesota. January is fine too, despite the inevitable spate of -10 F with -20 F windchill (that's approximately -23 C with -29 C windchill for those of you who understand the inherent superiority of Celsius over Fahrenheit because why the fuck would water freeze at 32 degrees and boil at 212?), because it's January, and that's how it's supposed to be.

But then, somewhere around the middle of February, I get tired of it. I get sick of the bitter cold that makes it impossible to warm up and requires 12 layers of clothing to not freeze to death; I get sick of everything being so covered in ice that it takes me twice as long to get anywhere on foot; I get sick of having to sleep with my socks on to keep my feet from freezing, because I don't really like wearing socks to being with, so wearing them to bed is one of my least favorite things to do (it just feels weird and unnatural). I just feel like it should be spring, or at least be somewhat warmer, by late February. Unfortunately, this is not generally the case in Minnesota, where it doesn't usually feel like spring until midway through April.

I love the seasons (expect for summer which can go die in a hole somewhere) and I don't think I could live somewhere that didn't have snow on Christmas for any length of time, but the winter here gets long. And while I don't hate the winter, I am always sad to see it start, because it means the end of autumn, which is by far my favorite time of year. It's cold enough to sleep without being life threatening, and I can break out my wonderful collection of striped long sleeve shirts. I just love the way that fall feels, and so it's always bittersweet to see the autumn turn into winter.

(via)

The good things about December are snow and Christmas, my absolute favorite holiday, second only to Arbor Day (just kidding, not one care about Arbor Day), but December also means non-stop work leading up to finals. My professors like to take our normal work load (which is soul crushing at best) and add onto that another midterm exam, a bunch more homework to prepare for the final, and then a final project/paper/exam. And I have to do all of this immediately after Thanksgiving break has sucked all of my motivation away. That's the problem with the end of the semester for me: I have lots of work to do in preparation for finals, but I don't care in the slightest about any of it. I always manage to get through it with my GPA intact, but, for such a magical time of year, it is really damn annoying.

Comic Book Wednesday: My Origin Story

Beware the power of CBW

I know that you have all been clamoring for the return of Comic Book Wednesday, imaginary readers. You've been reading this blog and wondering why I haven't discussed comics in lieu of my feelings in recent weeks. In truth, it's not because I haven't been reading them, there is a whole stack that I've read and am now waiting to get back from [Princess Leia Vampire], it's just that there is only so much I can talk about without doing reviews, and I don't think any of you are particularly interested in irregular reviews of the four titles I read. (So many commas in that last sentence; have fun parsing it).

So, I have decided to resurrect CBW, much like Jean Grey, this week as a welcome break from the depressing slog of my feelings/personal life which most of the recent posts have consisted of, but, because I do enjoy talking about myself (hence the feelings/personal life posts), this weeks CBW will be my origin story (read: how I got into comics). (Holy Parentheticals, Batman!).

I was alway a geeky child, with interests running towards fantasy and PBS from an early age. This should surprise no one. While other girls my age were having slumber parties and talking about boys (I presume) I was in my back yard duct taping lengths of PVC piping together to make swords or in my basement hot gluing pieces of felt together to make sheaths for said swords. They were awesome swords, and I probably made about half a dozen in total. I think that [BrotherBorg] still has some of them.

Around the age of ten I started spending inordinate amounts of time at my local library, and I would check out VHS tapes of old TV shows, most of which were British sit-coms, because, like I said, PBS. This lead to my discovery of episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation on VHS, which I immediately fell in love with. I quickly became obsessed with Star Trek in all of it's various incarnations, and decided that instead of actually watching any of the series all the way through, I should just read the novels/ fansites/ any other piece of content I could find. I ended up reading every Star Trek graphic novel/collection my library had, which wasn't many, but did serve to introduce me to comics, although I didn't quite like the format yet.

After about a year of being obsessed with Star Trek, [Nightcrawler] introduced me to the X-Men via X-Men: Evolution and the movies. I was instantly in love with the X-Men, which mean that I needed to consume every bit of content that existed pertaining to them. Once again, my library came to the rescue, as they had, and still have, a fairly large collection of graphic novels and trade paperbacks (collections of individual issues of comics). I quickly consumed every X-Men book they had, by which point I was pretty well bitten by the comic book bug. This lead to me reading every comic I could get my hands on, which an emphasis on Marvel comics, but a good helping of DC and Vertigo title as well.

This book is real and the most awesome thing ever written

After I had exhausted by library's collection of interesting comics, I started going to my local comic book shop (The Source Comics & Games for anyone interested) which was conveniently located two blocks from my house, and which I was familiar with due to my Pokemon card habit from a couple of years earlier (unfortunately, they are not paying me to shamelessly plug them). I spent countless hours there digging through back issues and reading trades (trade paper backs). Soon, I was reading weeklies and pulling multiple titles each week. This lasted throughout middle school and well into high school, although the number of titles I read continued to drop until I was only reading one or two books a month. I cancelled my pull sometime in 11th grade, and didn't reestablish another one until this year. It just got too difficult to keep up with the ever changing universes and events, as well as becoming prohibitively expensive, but I will always have a special place in my heart for Marvel and DC.

And that is how I came to be a comic book nerd. This is only a partial account though, because it is all tied up with libraries and Star Trek and my friendship with [Nightcrawler] and so many other stories which I don't have time to tell right now and that all have parts to play in my childhood and adolescence. The moral of this story is that comics are awesome.

Walk It Off

I love to walk. It's something I picked up from the [Paternal Unit], mostly because he likes to go on walks, and I am the only member of my family whose willing to go with him because unlike [SisterBot] I don't have a social life when I'm at home, and unlike [BrotherBorg] I do enjoy leaving the house on a regular basis. [Paternal Unit] is the reason that I've walked around all the of the lakes in Minneapolis and a good portion of those in St. Paul, and also the reason why I enjoy aimlessly walking. This summer, while in the grips of the restless ennui that the month of August engenders in me, I took to walking around Como Lake and the surrounding neighborhood whenever I couldn't stand to be in my house any longer. Walking calms me down when I'm upset and helps to syphon off some of the anxiety when I get tense. I think best on my feet, and it gives me an chance to sort out my thoughts.

Unfortunately, Como Park does not actually look this cool at night (via)

I was home for the holiday weekend, the first I've spent any amount of time at home since school started nearly three months ago. I couldn't stay still at home. I was restless, emotionally claustrophobic, and really damn anxious. I'm no stranger to anxiety; it crops up in my life from time to time due to a variety of things and every time we have a stormy spring, but it's usually linked to something specific, like severe weather or having to use a Bunsen burner, whereas the anxiety I've felt over the past couple of days is more general. It hasn't been really bad at any one time, it just seems closer to the surface than normal. Maybe I'm just more aware of it because I'm trying out this whole "being in touch with my emotions" thing, which is exhausting, by the way.

Anyways, it came to a head Friday night, and I just couldn't sit still any longer, so I left. I just went, and I ended up walking around Como Lake until my foot hurt and my knees ached, but I felt better. The lake is pretty at night and quite different than it is during the day when swarms of people are there. I ended up coming back to campus Saturday night due to the desire to actually be productive on Sunday as well as family stuff that meant that I wouldn't get back until the late afternoon on Sunday if I stayed at home for the night. Once again the restlessness and boredom reared their heads, and I ended up making a giant loop around the nearly empty campus. I ended up by the Institute for Child Development, which lead to the discovery of the walking/biking bridge across the river. I had seen it before from the 10th Ave. Bridge, but I didn't know where to access it, so it was a pleasant discovery.

I like it enough, that last night, after far too many hours at Walter Library (I really need to find a new place to study, eight hours in one day is unfortunate) I decided to go out of my way to use the walking bridge to cross the river in lieu of the Washington Ave Bridge. When I got across to the West Bank side, I noticed that if I took a right instead of the left that would take me back to my dorm, I would be in the small Bluff Street Park. There was a bike/pedestrian path that lead down out of site to the river. I decided to see where this path went, because I was enjoying the walk and I didn't want to go back to my dorm room and [Random Roommate #2] just yet.

The new 35W Bridge, for reference (via)

I ended up standing under the 10th Ave Bridge by the river. The 35W Bridge was lit up blue above me, framing a view of the river with the Stone Arch Bridge and what I think is the St. Anthony Fall Laboratory internally lit with soft, warm incandescence. The Gold Medal Flour sign blinked red from downtown, in sharp contrast to the cool blue of the bridge. It was beautiful in that way that only the city can be, and it was still, with only the occasional car on West River Road to disturb it. I felt really peaceful for the first time in a while, standing there, watching the lights and the river and the bridges. I could have stayed there all night, but after about ten minutes I managed to tear myself away and go home, mostly because my ears were getting cold. Right now, at least, it's probably my favorite spot in the city, and I'm tempted to go back during the day to look around a little bit, but for now, it's one of those places that seems to only really exist at night, all lit up with nobody watching.

Sidenote: I know some of you, imaginary readers, are currently yelling at me through the space-time vortex that is the internet because I shouldn't be walking around campus alone after dark. You do have a point, but I'm not going to listen to you, because I love it too much, as previously discussed here. I'm pretty careful, and if it comes down to it, I'm not afraid to pop someone's eyeballs. Also, I have fairly odd standards of physical safety. I'll be up half the night because of hypochondria fuelled anxiety due to a menstrual cramp (this happened last night) but I will gladly walk out into the middle of the street expecting cars to stop for me (I have the right of way, dammit!). So no, I will not call an escort to walk me across campus at nine at night, that would just ruin the effect. Just be happy I've stopped walking home at one in the morning.