Omorka's Lair

Via black_rider: Ask culture vs. Guess culture (ignore the sensationalist headline, just read the article).

I would put forth that I suspect some of it is temperament and cognitive style, too. In particular, I would guess that Askers tend to be extroverts, and Guessers introverts, if for no other reason than an introvert has likely (not invariably) modeled the other person's response before speaking, while extroverts often (not always) either lack that skill entirely or only use it on special occasions.

A nuance that appears to be missing from the article is that if a Guesser is reduced to asking, not only do they think there's a reasonable chance of a "yes," but they need (or at least strongly want) a "yes" answer - they wouldn't be putting themselves through the ordeal of asking if it weren't important. An Asker receiving such a request may not understand this (especially if their internal model of the other person isn't very good; see above), and treat it as if it were a request from another Asker, which does not come with importance markers. Conversely, an Asker may well ask a trivial favor from a Guesser, who may well respond to it as if it were of higher importance than it is - and feel let down, or even betrayed, to find that the Asker thought it a small thing.

In case anyone was wondering, I fall on the Guesser end of the scale but do "desperation Asking" - if the situation is dire enough, I will beg from anyone who will listen. Or, to quote a wise man, "I guess it's time to call Dad."

Dear manufacturers of cell phones:

Die in a fire.

Let me be more detailed. I understand why old handset-and-body rotary-dial phones had such poor sound reproduction; there isn't enough room in the end of the handset you hold to your ear for a better speaker under the technological limitations of the time. What I don't understand is why all phone manufacturers seem to have decided that all phones since then, despite improvements in speaker miniaturization, have focused on making the phone - whether land-line or cell - smaller, rather than improving the speaker.

If I am forced to speak to someone over a piece of technology, rather than face-to-face, I would at least like to be able to understand them. A phone speaker almost never allows me to do so without incredible ear-strain. Some phonemes are indistinguishable over a phone, and some very difficult to hear at all. And cell phones seem to be worse than land-line phones, although I am not entirely sure if this due to the tiny, low-fidelity speaker on the receiving end, or the tiny, low-fi microphone on the sending end.

I suspect that, if I could hear my interlocutor at something close to CD quality instead of as if I were listening to them through a tin can covered in bees, I would not be so invariably flustered when trying to address someone over the phone. Instead, I spend half my time trying to figure out what the hell they just said, and the other half of the time worrying that I sound stupid because I misunderstood them.

And this isn't even addressing the issues of transmission quality. Drop-outs make me want to cry.

No love,

Omorka

What I perceive
I can't always understand;
The difference is
Which side I get of your hand . . .

"Out of reserve, out of my wherewithal" indeed.

The Spouse bought the extended dance remix of Singin' in the Rain a while back, and I watched it (along with 90% of the extras, of course) over spring break. I have come to two conclusions about the movie:

1) Cosmo Brown is so totally in hopelessly unrequieted love with Don Lockwood it's not even funny.

2) Gene Kelley, circa 1952, had the finest male ass to ever grace the face of this planet. Bar none.

Regarding the first one, just look at how Cosmo looks at Don throughout the whole movie. The over-the-top franticness of "Make 'Em Laugh" absolutely reeks of repressed sexual energy. He doesn't seem the least bit interested in the girl at the party, even though the dialogue suggests he's trying to seduce her. (This one is probably the censor's fault, but that's metathinking.) And his comment to Lina - "You looked pretty good for a girl!" - is exactly what one would expect. There's gotta be a fanfic there, if I can ever sit down and write it.

The second one is a little easier to mine.

In the beginning, there was art on the walls and storytelling around the cookfire. We drew and told stories about ancestral heroes and heroines, gods and goddesses. There was admiration, pride, perhaps even fear connected with the subjects, but it seems unlikely anyone would ever fall in love or lust with them.

Then came drama, sculpture, and the written word. It seems, from the existence of the myth of Pygmalion, that falling in live with a sculpture, at least, was possible. I seem to recall that the actors on the Greek stages had fans. But still, one was chasing after something physical, something existing - a player on the stage, or a painting, or a chink of marble - as well as the image behind it. Presumably no one wanted to boff Antigone herself. At least, if they did, I imagine either the Greeks would have mentioned it, or the Romans would have complained about it.

The written word continues to develop, as does drama. At some point, the romantic novel is invented. Now we are supposed to have feelings for/about the characters, either as embodied through actors or as carried solely by the page. Who has pined for Viola?

Then - the photograph, followed by the motion picture; also, we have sound recording. Eventually these merge.

Now we are in trouble.

As an eighth grader, I remember watching endless episodes of "The Monkees," at the time the band was having its goofy little revival. I had a massive and passionate crush, in the way that only a thirteen-year-old girl can have, on Micky Dolenz. Not the one that existed in 1987, though. He was interesting to hear interviews of, to be sure, but far too old to hold any interest for me. But neither was it the fictional character of Micky from the TV show - the frenzied goofball. No, I was head-over-teenybopper-heels for the Micky Dolenz who had been in 1968 - who of course no longer existed except as the groundwork for the mature (if goofy-looking) adult of 1987.

At least he was still alive. I could have had the misfortune of watching the old Bing Crosby movies my mother enjoys. Having seen some of them now, I certainly wouldn't mind having a chance at Bing as he was in, oh, about 1933.

One of the glories of text is that it preserves a bit of a person (actually, an impressive number of bytes, but who's counting) for future generations to interact with. Our recording technology now makes it possible to lust after, crush on, or even potentially fall in true love with a person who is not only generations older than us but it now dead as an Edison cylinder.

What's the old quote? "My best friend died thirty years before I was born, and my true love will be born thirty years after my death?" Something like that, anyway. I suppose we ought to be glad we might at least get the chance to see and hear them. At least the greatness that was Kelley's posterior has been recorded for all time, along with Bing's voice and Astaire's grace.

Makes one wonder what great asses we missed on those ancient players on Athens's stages, though. Or what great lovers have long since become soil again in China, instead of facing a camera in Hong Kong five hundred years later. Or . . .

School has started. My kids rock, except for 2B. Hey, down from five bad classes two years ago to five good ones, ne? More about that mess later . . .

Not this past weekend but the weekend before, I managed to make it to the third annual 3G retreat. I'm really glad I did. I'm not going to say I made a lot of new friends - that's not why I go to these things, but I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I did get to chant with the other ladies (at 3:30 AM - LOL!), we did a craft workshop, I got a scrying reading (decent) and did two Tarot readings (one muddled, one pretty good, I think), a few of us who all have PCOS to one extent or another had a mutual bitch session, and we did a kick-butt ritual (although I think it would have been even cooler if we had waited until after dark to do it - light has a repressive effect on the sorts of emotions that sort of ritual is supposed to bring up, at least for me).

We also did a cute little personality test called the Cube.

*Spoiler Warning* If you haven't done the Cube, either don't read any farther or do it along with the description, as it spoils it to know what the interpretations are. *Spoiler Warning*

The Cube consists of six "questions," for which you write down your responses as you go. The questions are:

1) There's a desert. What does it look like?

2) In the desert, there's a cube. What does it look like? Where is it? Describe it.

3) In the desert with the cube is a ladder. Where is it in relation to the cube? What is it made of? What does it look like?

4) Also in the desert is a horse. Where is it in relation to the cube and the ladder? What color is it? What does it look like?

5) Somewhere in the desert is a storm. What kind of storm is it? Where is it in relation to the cube, the ladder, and the horse? Describe it.

6) Somewhere in the desert are flowers. Where are they? What color are they? Describe them.


Ready? So far, so good. Here were my answers:

1) The desert is made of ridges and dunes of featureless white sand. The sun is directly overhead, and the sky is so pale it is almost white. Nothing grows there; nothing dies there. It is blazingly hot.

2) The cube is gleaming black obsidian, 6' on a side. It is completely covered with cuneiform markings on all sides, including the face-down side. It rests precisely on top of the sand, unscuffed by blowing grains. It is searing hot to the touch, heated by the sun, and smells like hot stone.

3) The ladder is a wooden rung ladder, bleached by the sun and weathered by the scouring sands. It looks rickety. Some of the rungs are loose in their sockets, although none are missing. It rests against the cube in the exact center of the east side, creating a perfect 30-60-90 triangle with the cube and the ground; the top of the ladder is exactly even with the top of the cube.

4) The horse is galloping over the nearest dune to the south of the cube, heading directly towards it. She is a jet-black Arabian mare, and pregnant. She is kicking up showers of white sand where her hooves fall, but none of it is caught in her mane or tail.

5) The storm is off to the southwest, just visible. Anvil-shaped thunderheads scrape the sky; rain is visible falling from their undersides. Lighting can be seen, but the thunder is too distant to hear. The wind blows from the direction of the storm, carrying the smell of rain on wet sand.

6) In the wake of the storm, thin green blades of grass are springing up. At their tips are tiny flowers of pale yellow and blue, hundreds of them barely a quarter of an inch wide. The horse can smell the flowers on the wind.


Funky, neh? So here're the interpretations:

1) The desert is only a backdrop for the other five elements.

2) The cube is yourself.

3) The ladder is your friends.

4) The horse is your mate.

5) The storm is your personal troubles.

6) The flowers are your children (literal or metaphorical).

My, my.

To make things weirder, when we first did this, it didn't ever occur to me that the cube could be any color _but_ black. It shocked the fool out of me when other people started describing their cubes, and they weren't black!

Now, to push this into total freaky-weirdness, I just checked KA's gaming blog this evening and discovered that *she's* played the Cube recently, too!

A number of my friends, both Real Life and online, have been having problems with depression recently.

I'm in a strange position with respect to depression. I had a couple of acute episodes in late adolescence, so I know - I remember - what it was like. On the other hand, they were acute episodes, lasting a couple of months each. I've never actually had to deal with _chronic_ depression. And, in that, I'm a little unusual; most people who suffer from depression suffer from it long-term. Under normal circumstances, I'm somewhat dysthymic - which means that I sense pleasure or fun less easily than the average person - but other than making me a bit of a party pooper with a dry sense of humor, it doesn't affect my everyday life that much.

But I remember what it was like. And that means that some people, who have never really known depression or even ordinary despair, are really, totally starting to piss me off.

Not that I envy them; not at all. People who have never known Melancholia's company at all are - well - invariably shallow. How can a soul that has never been bruised know where its boundaries are? I think there's a line in _The Play About the Baby_ that goes something like "If you have no broken heart, how can you know who you are?"

No, the problem is that they always have "helpful" responses to depression (or mourning, or grief; I don't think they generally see a difference) along the lines of "Cheer up!" or "Count your blessings," or, worst of all, "Suck it up, soldier! Get over it!" And they honestly think these vinegar-dipped platitudes will help, that they even mean something. These people have no clue.

The above phrases aren't helpful even for a temporary grief. For depression, they're nothing less than a taunt, a flaunting of one's wellness, like inviting someone whose leg is broken to join you on your pogo stick.

Churchill called it the "black dog". J. K. Rowling turned it into the worst monster she could think of, the dementor (and set Sirius the black dog against it, oddly enough). But neither gets at the worst part of depression. Seeing it as something outside yourself is something you can only do on the way out. When you're in it, it's inside of you. It's hard to tell it from yourself. The boundaries between are fuzzy at best. How can you "get over" something that's lodged like a tumor at your center?

In some ways, I almost think that the shallow people are afraid to let themselves feel grief. Anger is much more fashionable. You get mad, you scream some obscenities, you smash up some furniture or punch someone's gut - you might get in trouble, but no one will think the less of you, right? You get sad, you sigh, you stare mournfully into space, you maybe cry a little - somehow, that makes you weak. What's weak about expressing sadness that's not also weak about losing it in anger? Why is it okay to rage, but not to cry?

Does this all come from the same place that says that casual sex with a stranger is more macho than sex with a friend?

Can I buy a new culture, please?