Thespis Strip Dated Sunday, January 30, 2011

Click to embiggen.

TRANSCRIPT:
Marvin: Cells are the smallest unit of life. Cells are alive.
Collin: oh, yeah, life.
But just because something responds, grows, reproduces, moves, and metabolizes doesn't mean it has a life force to be sucked.
Marvin: But...
Collin: What about plants, though?
Metroids ain't vegetarians.
END.
Previously on Thespis...
Collin: friggin' Ireland!
It's like, green there! And the only people who like, live there are either old geezers or young punks!
or Bono.
It's funny 'cause Bono is both.
END.

Frozen: Under the Surface of the Ice

   One of the workshop teachers at UTA, I can't quite recall why the subject was broached but it may have had to do with the evolving costume design throughout the film, said that he didn't much care for Frozen. Which is understandable; I like the film but am not much of a fan of the trolls, and...

   Actually, I'm not sure if I've even seen Frozen yet at the time this blog post goes up; I'm checking my notebook of media input/output and the earliest viewing of Frozen I can definitively prove takes place, tomorrow, to this post's date... but as of the writing of the post, why yes, I've seen it, so there. Backlog posts, FTW... or, for the lose, actually, but FTL already means something (faster than light, of course) so ??? sure why not, FTW!

   Anyway, the professor didn't like Frozen that much. His reasons against it had to do with:

1. seriously, Disney, have you read Snow Queen, even if you are adapting it as loosely as you are you're still dropping the ball on a lot of really neat plot points and stuff, and
2. also you've got the "problem of the wandering villain."

   Which points are valid. At least the second one. I've... never actually finished, The Snow Queen. Pokémon tears, I think it had to do with...?

   But anyway. Wandering villains. Who's the villain at any given point in the story? Wesselton? Hans? Elsa? Yeah, yeah, I know you're not supposed to call Elsa a "villain," and you  will be mopped across the floor if you insinuate that, by you know, Frozen nerds*, but, her actions sure seem to drive a lot of the plot, for someone who's still a hero, and so, conceivably, for purposes of plot, well yes maybe, she is, one of those.

   Jus' sayin'.

   Here's the thing, though. Pretending I've seen the film by this point (which, again, not until tomorrow! but it sure is fun writing things and posting them into the past,) that problem, the problem of the wandering villain, is perhaps partly what makes Frozen so compulsively rewatchable. Aside from the musical numbers and all. There's a tension that underlies the whole thing, and... I don't know, it still seems kind of weird to be posting this up today like I've already seen and analyzed it. Which I have. Just not yet.

   There's a tension that underlies the whole thing, a sort of je n'est ce quois, that throws everything ever so slightly off-kilter, which, as is thematically appropriate, doesn't get resolved until the "true" villain is revealed (and by that point the narrative thread is strong enough, from multiple fronts, to pull us through the climax.) It'd be really quite masterful, if I suspected it were actually deliberate. Only, it's probably not, because there's still the Wesselton subplot that needs to be resolved, which probably could have been done earlier were the tension/resolution metastructure definitely deliberate.

   If you've still got any doubts as to whether it was, just remember, I just dropped the word "metastructure," in dealing with the plot of a kids' film. A well produced highly thoughtful and polished kids' film, but, again, I just dropped the word "metastructure." So make of that what you will.

Trippiness Postulate Redux Plus

   There comes a point when the "trippiness" over the loss of a thing is overcome by the trippiness of the fact that one had that thing in the first place. Pretty sure I've brought this up in the past, specifically in relation to death, but the paradigm can be expanded. Specifically, thus-- on the long bus ride home last night, the bed I found myself to be missing turned out to be my own. Two years out, two months back, and my own bed isn't so strange anymore.

   Whoa.

   It was the oddest thing the first night back from my mission. Not that it was like things weren't real-- when is anything ever like things are real? It was so cold, with the windows apparently unsealed; the room was so cramped, with the mountains of give-away clothes that weren't ours, stuffed into giant black trash bags and abandoned in the room that had been sans occupant up until under an hour ago. I was so tired.

   And I couldn't sleep.

   Back on the bus. The driver, Toni, asks me her question, I think sometime not long after one midnight rest stop. I can no longer recall what that question is, though it may have something to do with this very thing, the bed that I missed. I think it has to do with the mission, though.

   I didn't know she knew.

   What a mission. By this point both fresh and only a memory, too remote to do any real harm-- this is the transition point; that must be why I bring it up. Her asking. About the mission, about the bed, it's same question.

   I always have to be circumambulatory when I'm asked about it-- the floodgates open up, if I go into any details at all. So I let them think what they want. Figure it's easier than giving "the talk." I say I give birth... Let everyone assume I'm a female, even though I'm a male seahorse, maybe.

   But she asked me, like she already knew about it. I'm able to be both terse and revelatory. It's nice. It must be nice. Must be. Like I said, I can't remember what the question is, only that there is one, hanging in the still air of the moving school bus, like a plum black as the midnight around it. It possesses weight, and form, but takes up no space.

   I'm so tired here, and it's so cold...

Thespis Strip Dated Sunday, January 23, 2011

Strip dated Sunday, January 23, 2011

TRANSCRIPT:
Bambi: ooh, there's Collin! Ask him!
Marvin: Alright, Bambi.
Do germs have souls?
Collin:
That's a bit like saying the cells of you body have individual souls, innit?
Marvin: oh, right.
END.
Collin: Friggin' Ireland!
It's like, green there! And the only people who like, live there are either old geezers or young punks!
or Bono.
END.

What the Heck Going On Is

   I haven't posted a post in, like, a week. Or half a week. Or a week and a half, depending on how you look at it. I did get up, a couple of posts (Thespis posts being prescheduled to match their dates...) But for the most part, for the better part of a week and a half, I haven't been posting, even on a real thing.

   Like, what the heck, am I still even interested in this project? Yes. I've still got exactly 100 posts' worth of backlog from not blogging from my mission, and now 8 days here. Washington said, "it is better to offer no excuse than a bad one," and so, hey, I guess I've got no excuse, not that I haven't been working on the blog... just, nothing visible (a whole lotta Hundred Things, headed your way.) Dang, that was just an excuse. Not that all excuses are bad; I hope that one isn't. Nonetheless.

   Back on the mission, I've got my contact card distributed to the elders there, and I had it in time before the January 2013 group got back home December 2014-- I distributed my contact card, with the address of this blog on it, right, so, that's a tacit advertisement that right now it would seem I'm failing to live up to. (Jan 2013 is so far though the only group now at home who received my card on the mission (my own group not receiving it, of course, as it was mailed into the mission after I got home.))

   I do have posts for those days, just none of them very polished yet and thus none of them up yet... I'll just backdate them when I post them up. I'm out of town for a few days starting tonight, so if I don't have anything for you for a couple more days plus don't be surprised...

SMART Goals

   President Johns, on the mission, told us about SMART goals. I used to have a much better way to phrase it, and this post was originally a whole lot more detailed, but the computer deleted all my progress on this post even though I'd had it saved and was 90% of the way done, so I'll just be perfunctory about this. I think I reconstructed most of it, but I can't go back and check, and if I could I wouldn't need to. You can get a good definition of a SMART goal elsewhere, though, so, moving on.

   SMART goals. You've probably heard of them, or some variation thereof. A mnemonic device designed to ensure maximal effectiveness of goalplanning.

   President Johns defined S.M.A.R.T. as follows:

• S for SPECIFIC. What specific thing do you want accomplished?
• M for MEASURABLE. In order for a goal to be "good," you have to be able to quantify your progress along it in some way.
• A for ATTAINABLE. The goal, although ideally it should make you stretch, much be relatively realistic.
• R for RECORDED. Writing down a goal changes it from a wish into an actual goal, in conjunction with the other things.
• T President Johns defines as your need to TELL someone. This gives you responsibility over your actions with the specific need to report to another person.

   After that, I was inspired- what would be SMART goals for the artist specifically? Goals relating specifically to content creation, "art." I call them SMARTIST goals. Yeah, like Axe Cop's last name, I guess...? But, no, SMART artist, SMARTIST. Though I don't think it was deliberate at the time. Three more things, things specific to artists...

• I is for INSPIRATION. Without it, no art would, be. So this is key. Why does this particular art need to exist? Out of all the ideas in this world, define why you're picking this particular idea to translate into reality. You hear a lot of artists having manifestos and stuff, which helps define their "whys" of art-- this is it exactly.
• S is for SKILLS. What training or techniques do you need to know in order to maximize on your vision of what you see the art as? This is where the hard work comes in, all the practice that brought you up to this skillset. 
• T is for TOOLS. The right ones for the job. You have your inspiration, but what medium are you specifically looking at that would express your theme the best? What techniques of the medium are needed, and are you proficient at those? Can you drag techniques from one medium to another? And beyond medium, what genre can you use whose tropes are at your disposal, to effectively evoke the response you want? 

   I've also seen R stand for RELEVANT, whether or not your goal fits into your larger life goal or anything, but in the SMARTIST goal that's covered under INSPIRATION. In addition, T most often seems to stand for TIME-BOUND, but President Johns's T definition fits SMARTIST way better: with art, well you can't rush it, and sometimes you labor with it and sometimes it flows, so: tell somebody. Hey I'm making art!

The Quasi-Guilt of Searching for What You're Looking For

   I always get sidetracked trying to do research, because I try to find out as much of the surrounding story as I possibly can, but find myself link hopping (that's the word for that, right?) and derailed off on tangents. Of course, I could avoid this by going to the source directly instead of sort of swimming around it and only half-looking for it, but I kind of feel for some reason guilty to use the search bar (no, you're not the only one, and no, I don't know what causes it either-- embarrassment of search terms? Fear of keystroke loggers?) Plus, the temptation to have freedom to do that is just too great.

Temptation is a powerful tool. But, it's the devil's only tool. Master that, you've mastered Satan.

Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (Revisited!)

   Well, it's been, quite a few years. Rewatched the 2002 Dreamworks flick Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron recently; I started out with the express purpose to see if I could catch the transitions between the CGI and the hand-drawn animation (not so hard-- cel-shaded animation has a distinct style of, shading,) but I soon discovered far more intriguing spectra being played with. I caught three factors specifically; maybe there are more I failed to catch. 'Cause, you know, whatever.

   Breaking it down on these several levels is an incredibly instructive experience which I recommend to the student of animation, and/or storytelling, and/or anthropomorphological sociology (which may not be a real thing but if it isn't totally should be.) If you were a true wonk you would watch the film three times through, one runthrough each for the study of each of the following (not that I'd recommend it):

1. In between handdrawn animation and CGI animation
2. In between anthropomorphic equine behavior and genuinely zoomorphic equine behavior
3. Inner thoughts being revealed through the narration vs inner thoughts being revealed through the music

POST PREVIEW VERSION... CHECK BACK "SOON" FOR FULL POST

Thespis Strip Dated Sunday, January 16, 2011

Click to embiggen.

   I think this came out around the same time as the Scooby Doo/Batman crossover on Batman: The Brave and the Bold. Entirely coincidental. And besides, the Batmite Presents stuff isn't canon, anyway.

TRANSCRIPT:
Marvin: Oh man, you'll never guess what the secret identity of the Joker turned out to be in the dream I had last night.
Collin: Velma from Scooby Doo.
Marvin: ...
How'd you guess?
Collin: No guess. I already knew. I am supergenius. No secret can be hidden from me. All of life's mysteries are laid bare before me. I have the power, and it is swell.
Marvin: ...or you just read my dream journal.
Collin: Nope, I just subconsciously influenced your dreams.
Announcer: OH SNAP MORE LEVERAGE STYLE FLASHBACKS!!!
45° Angle
reflection of reflection
peripheral vision to mirror
Sign: JOKER IS VELMA
Collin: You keep a dream journal?
Marvin: Well I um er duh...
shoot.
Collin: No secret can be hidden from me.

Post-Mission Reviews

   Ever since I got off it, I've had to give a couple of overviews of my mission... Since FCHHM is so unique, it's always been more about the mission itself than any experiences I had-- of course I had to report what I did and how I fit in, but incorporating my own experience within into the review was more of a process of telling what I did rather than what happened to me, and in the process of giving a few of these reports I found that it's a lot easier to explain up front the fundamentals of exactly what makes the "long strange trip" that it's been so long and strange... And, since a lot of how the FCHHM YM experience changed dramatically in the two-year period from my inception on it to my completion of it, that's easier said than done...

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Untitled... for Now

   Always found it kind of stupid and annoying, maybe a bit of a copout, when people did that... How many words in the English language, and all other languages, and proper names and everything, and the glut of combinations of those, and phrases, and everything, and you can't come up with an arbitrary name to cobble together? Apparently not; if it doesn't think it's the right time to be titled, well, you can't argue with your own art. (Same with creators not knowing for sure some specific detail about their creation, and being unwilling to make something up. I should be the expert in this, I suppose, seeing my writing style consists of collecting up things from here and there over years and, cobbling seems like such an imprecise thing, so it's not the greatest term...)

"Untitled... for Now (13 Jan Renard.)" Pencil and acrylic on paper, 2014-2015. Click to embiggen.

   Drew this back on the mission, 2/3rds of a year ago; put a paintbrush to it today because I had excess paint from something else I was working on and didn't want to let it go to waste (being a waste-conscious child of the '90s is helpful in some aspects of art, but downside alert: there's absolute hell to pay during the mixing phase of painting: "hmm, hey, there's still a dab of dark umber left, maybe I could squeeze this sienna into it, lest it go to waste... I'm sure nothing could possibly go wrong with-- nope, nope, just more mud." Alright, maybe just purgatory. Limbo? Limbo, works...)

How to Make Other People Think You Rock Harder Than You Actually Do

   This post has been a few years in the making- starting off pretty innocuous, (maybe) intended for use as a prescheduled post to go up during my mission, but left incomplete as I realized it was far too ambitious to be prepped in time- and I left to focus on other posts I could have up more reasonably.

   And now we're here at last.

   Let's start with my childhood. I'm honestly not sure how I made friends. I've got one or two ideas on it, and by that I mean, I have an idea. That idea has developed into an hypothesis, and that hypothesis has grown into a natural law.

   The law of, how to make other people think you rock harder than you actually do.

   A law that clearly I must have been following this whole time, inadvertently... I got lucky. But you don't have to.

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Hipsterhipster

   As humans we are born with certain amounts of suck. It's not a bug; there are no bugs-- only "features." It's a comforting notion, actually- the idea it's okay to make mistakes, and so you don't have to be afraid of screwing up (which fear, laser-eyed-statue-things-from-Never-Ending-Story-like, is very often the cause of screwups in the first place.) "Suck" being built in, having this paradigm, raises some questions, though. Such as-- why do we even want to pull ahead of everyone else anyway? Just to be ahead of them? We can help these people! We can do good in the lives of others...

   But then again... It's kind of presumptuous to think we can run their lives better than they can, right? Isn't it? Why else would we do anything? Right?

   And thus, stalking villainously from Stage Right, enters our Dilemma.

   I call it, "the problem of hipsterdom." Totally catchy name, ahoy. Disparaging something and saying it sold out when it gets cool, why is that? Wouldn't you want others to share in on your good fortune, knowing how awesome a certain band (or, gosh, Apple product, or something) is? I think it's a defensive mechanism of some sort. Fall back, fall back. You've got to separate yourself from the Great Unwashed somehow. (Great secret, though, which nobody ever discusses because, well, it's a secret: we are every bit as petty and messed up as they are... but we can't let them know that.)

   Defensive mechanism, right-- personal example here; It's like I think Nikola Tesla would be dirtied somehow if more people knew how awesome he was. Certain amounts of suck, again, but, totally irrational, I know. I-- I think... It's a basic part of humanity; here, taken so far apparently as to define its own sub slash counter culture. It's a sort of natural evolution, not that many would have been able to see it coming.

Terrifying Thing

   For most horrifying hybrid species ever, I nominate the lion/baboon. It may not seem all that terrifying thinking about it, but in real life it would be very, very scary to have. Just think of how monstrous that would be. If that existed in real life. Just, think about it. Do you know how horrifying baboons are without being also half-lion? Imagine the teeth on that thing... Imagine how uncanny that valley...

   Yep, this is another non-14 prewritten but not prescheduled post, which means that I've had more than two years here to try and think of something that one-ups this one, devoting probably much more time than I should have, and that's my final opinion on this ("more time than I should have" being defined here as, any time at all.) I mean, it even beats out the  lion/hippopotamus/crocodile Ammit from Egyptian mythology...


 

Thespis Strip Dated Sunday, January 9, 2011

Click to embiggen.

   Still need to learn how to spell "intelligent." And "conscious." But, yeah, it's great how the characters in the comic strip itself dream in the format of comics, referring to panels and everything. It only makes sense, and it's really awesome. Freud!

TRANSCRIPT:
Marvin: I had the craziest dream last night.
Collin: Go on...
Marvin: Well, um, you were a female, and we were, uh, getting married.
Collin: Hmm... interesting. The reversal in my gender may signify subconscious urges to replace your platonic love with romantic love...
But let's delve into the symbolism further. As a bride, I would be wearing white, a symbol of purity and innocence. You want me to return to my pre-intellegent [sic] innocent state.
Marvin: Funny you should mention innocence, because...
In this panel I swear!...
...and in this panel you damn me for my swearing.
Collin: Swearing in the comic? It could reflect subconcious [sic] urges to break the rules and get away with it.
My condemnation of your swearing could be seen as a representation of my being some kind of superego to your id...
...but I see it as a symbol of me being a controlling figure in your life.
Perhaps as a reaction to my newly gained hyperintellegence? [sic]
Marvin: The next panel takes place 500 years later.
I want a divorce.
Collin: Oh man!

Blade Runner

   And continuing posts I hadn't actually gotten preposted, there's this little guy, which I continue having mixed emotions about, and mixed emotions about not having posted up. Mixed emotions about posting up now, as well- this post could easily go into the Hundred Things.

   YOU: Wait, it's both a potential Hundred Things and a potential Fourteen Days?

   ME: Yes.

   YOU: Aren't those kind of opposites, with the Fourteen Days being things you'd meant to schedule before the mission and the Hundred Things being things you learned on your mission?

   ME:...Yes.

   YOU:...

   ME: Let me explain.

   My post is on Oscar "Blade Runner" Pistorius, the South African double amputee Olympic sprinter medalist. (And if you keep up on your sports news, you're already wincing.) He's a cyborg, with a superpower, and a codename. He's a superhero, right? Here's the single paragraph I got into the post, before realizing I didn't have much more to say on the matter:

   Proving that real life is actually comic books in disguise, Oscar Pistorius, quite possibly the first real-life superhero who is actual a superhero instead of some loser in a costume (and yes, I checked- they are all losers.)

   And then I had an except from a newsarticle about him coming second in the 400m heat, thus qualifying him for the semi-final. "I didn't know if I should cry or be happy," Pistorius tells BBC Sport. "It was such a mix of emotions." And that was it.

   And then, on my mission, during what must have been the period where I wasn't the best elder because I read the newspaper on a fairly regular basis, it turns out that Blade Runner is actually a super villain.

   Whoops.

Courier

   Now that the Fourteen Days has gone up, and I'm down to exactly 100 posts I'd failed to preschedule before heading off on my mission, I feel totally free. Whatever freedom it is-- it's still a freedom, and this freedom I feel is, I feel free to put up other posts I'd written two years ago but didn't publish either for one reason or another, and which didn't make it into my final cut for the actual Fourteen Days for one reason or another. Usually length or quality purposes.

   Except for this one. I always thought this post had gone up prescheduled but turns out not. Huh. I've got it here for you now, at least- now it's time to tell you about something very dear to my heart.

   Courier is-- yes, Courier is my subject. The font, you ask? Yes, precisely. It's fascinating. It's a fascinating fascinating font. What Courier is, is something of a paradox of a typeface. It represents the past and future...

   Designed as a "typewriter" font to emulate the typewriter fonts of the past, Courier is what they call a monospaced typeface-- in other words, it has the the same width to all characters, just like the letters on the type bars of a typewriter. This "monospaced" format is almost entirely unique in the modern typeface industry-- if anyone needs it, it's there in Courier and almost nowhere else (and Courier makes it look the handsomest anyway.)

   The monospaced format allowed easy separation into rows and columns (if all the letters are the same width, a character a certain number of letters over is at the same spot along as a character along a different line)-- this feature is ideal for scanning massive amounts of data. Courier, then, once used as a typewriter font, thus became useful for programming purposes to signify code. 

   Yay Courier!

Beacon Point-- Today

   Alright, so- meant to be up at 8:30 in the morning, post-wise, but here I am 12 and a half hours later. You saw in yesterday's post how I managed to get my files all off of my resurrected (but still dopey acting) external harddrive, right? There's a tad more on the exact contents of everything and how I found a whole bunch of notes and short stories and everything on it too, over at a real thing, where I said I'd also go into more detail. So here I am, saying, so many distracting things.

   I'd been facing the genuine possibility that Thespis would run out, the first time(s) the connection to the harddrive failed- I've got so many notes on the outline the story's going to take, and strip scripts I was going to do, and I'd resigned myself to it a bit, but, well there was that, for one. I'd sort of phased Thespis off when it struck me just how cerebral all the jokes were, not just some but all of them, which would be terrifically offputting to a lot of people, and how does that make me look besides? Like I'm trying way too hard, right, but, no, it's Thespis, I realized; it's supposed to be that way, so... I'm going to need to art those...

   But, yes, harddrive retrieved for school stuff, and now it's been turned into a tool for, general slacking off... My life is simultaneously ruined, and saved- and maybe one day I'll tell you the full import of that statement, but for now- yeah, I was just goofing off. Which didn't leave much time for blogging when 8:30 rolled around and I should have had a post.

   Speaking of blogging, here's that last of the Fourteen Days for you here!

• Patheticisms pt I
• Patheticisms pt II: Unoriginality is A-okay!
• 24 Season Finales
• On Snipers and Rabbit-Holes
• Style/Substance/Message/Messager

   Which means it's down to the Hundred Things, now. Dang, it's only going to get harder... or, well, it's not harder work, it's just "more."

Into the Log of Madness

   My Emergency Post of Uninspired Drivel that I Always Have Up as a Backup in Case I Don't Wake Up in Time to Prevent it from Posting and Put Something Quality Up in its Place

   Lorem Ipsum Dolor Sit Amet

   The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog

   Oh man all the letters of the alphabet, there's totally a word for that...

   Pangram, that's it.

   You know in Russian they've got a pangram that seriously takes only the entire alphabet to do without any repetition of any of the letters at all... that's truly rare in English... I reused e's a couple of times, and o's all over the place...

   ETAOIN SHRDLU

   November 20: Man I can't remember my password to my email or anything. Well actually just my email. I've got a whole folder of all my passwords saved on my harddrive (and maybe I shouldn't have admitted that) but that's the one with the cord that's been busted  ever since attempting to plug it into the Windows 98, and then I tried "doctoring" the wire to see if I could get the same port on one end hooked up with some new wiring to the USB interface on the other... well, now I know what the inside of one of those cords looks like; it's a lot more than just one or two easy-to-track wires... so that needs replacing... well I suppose I could shop around...

   November 25: My email password was written on a sticky note, to manage my account while I was away in case that needed to get done, so I'm into that... there are still a bunch of other passwords I don't know, on my drive somewhere...

   December 25: Aand Christmas time has come around, and I got a new cord, sweet- I'm kind of trepidatious to see if it works...

   December 26: It doesn't work! Not that it's much of a disappointment; I haven't had access to it in two and a half years...

   January 4: Hey guys, it totally works now; I totally found everything on it and managed to extract all its data- had to do this last step gingerly, since I plugged it in and the computer recognized it once I held the USB port at a certain angle, but that only worked for around five seconds, before I really had chance to dig around looking for the file I have my passwords on, and then it disconnected again... but it had worked! So plugging it in one more time, but not holding my hand there just trusting the connection to work, it worked-- but not trusting the connection to stay connected, we just dumped all the files onto the desktop temporarily, and then I could scrounge around for my accounts and passwords and everything. There's a lot more inexplicability I downloaded from the internet than I remember there being... (that's not a euphemism for anything; you've seen my attraction to the inexplicable on the internet.)

   January 5: The reason I tried one more time like that, in search of user names and passwords: we were looking for my account name and password to try to log into my college account-- didn't work, though. Phone call in this morning, turns out my account had been discontinued (you think that may have something to do with the voc rehab account being frozen two years for my mission?) I signed up for a new one; should be ready for me in time for Spring Semester. Only need a couple more courses for my Associates, which has always made it complicated whenever anyone's asked me about my schooling plans...

   I've been noticing one or two dramatic themes running through my life, maybe I could talk about those...

   Lorem Ipsum Lorem Ipsum Casey Casem Lorem Ipsum et cetera

   Hello World

Nerdnerd

   Continuing on the trail of thought of my "Hipsternerd" series from a couple of months ago, now- I abandoned the thread as I grew dissatisfied with the imprecision of the terminology, especially with "nerd," and so I'd like to pick that up again briefly here.

   There are still separate stereotypes within nerddom, but it would take intense levels of boldness to claim, say, every ComicCon attendee dresses up in elaborate outfits-- even then, though, we have those who hold all furries are fursuiters (...aand Blogger's spellcheck just recognized both "fursuiter" and "furry" (n.) as legitimate words, even though it continues to be incapable of recognizing the word "spellcheck." Wait, there it is.) Nerds that do do some types of nerdish things don't necessarily do all the other types of stereotypically nerdish things, and, gosh, I guess it's less of a continuum of intensity so much as, patches, or something. Clusters.

   Originally I'd been going to have a total definition of each kind of nerd based on fervency and everything, before I realized it would be impossibly ambitious on its own without the fact that traits aren't awarded on a scale-- maybe a nerd both LARPs and pens-and-papers, for example, and the intensity of fandom has nothing to do with the activities of fandom he or she is into.

   Like I said, exactly what a "nerd" is is something difficult to pin down- with the "non-continuum continuum" of properties (and not even necessarily cerebral ones) that a "nerd" can be defined by, I rather think that the idea of a "nerd" of anything dwells not in the space of the property that is "fanned," but the intensity of the fandom. Analyzing it, it'd be difficult to find any property nowadays without some cultish aspect to its fandom, and nerddom has always been defined at least situationally from fandom.

   The sheer glut of said "properties" that one can find floating around nowadays would seem to attest to the idea that most things are at least partially obscure, and the fanbase (in order to be truly a fanbase) would have to be devoted or loyal or if none of those things at least vocal. Which seems to be the direction things are headed; away from the first two and toward the latter option (which vocality doesn't always preclude the other two, i.e. a fan can be both content and vocal, but my oh my does it seem that that's quite the rarity.)

   Thus we see, even within this continuum that nerddom is, there would be deeper smaller continua-- defined not only by intensity of emotion but what the exact emotion is, from fanboys to fans to fanatics. Continua all over- clusters, again, in other words. You see how impossible a task it would be to make blanket definitions? I'm just armchairing, here, though, by the way- I don't have any really solid crunchable data to back my ideas up, aside from a life's worth of experience with the subject. I go on about what nerds are and aren't, so much, but the only thing for certain is there's never been a more rewarding time in the history of the world to be a manchild. (Not that I'm saying that, you know, nerds are manchildren... though that would provide a good navigational tool on the difference between a nerd and a geek... I thought I was done, but maybe I'll continue on that thought one day...)

ASPARAGUS IN THE ROOM

   See yesterday's post at "a real thing" on why I'm not here at 8:30 am on the dot today, and ditto for yesterday's post... After 8:30 it's tough and arbitrary, like I've explained, but here I am anyway, super late today. Even got up my "a real thing" post to boot, so.

   Been going back through old posts of mine, just a bit- it's always the most fascinating, I've discovered, when I'm talking about my own Asperger's syndrome, and whether that seems to have any effect in my life or not. Posting about it every day would sound super conceited, however, and I'm really not sure if I've got all that much to say beyond what I've done (or beyond that which is coming as part of the Hundred Things-- there are one or two items from that that do wrestle with this issue directly, Jacob-with-the-angel-like.) Also feel like I should talk more about my life, which would maybe be interesting to you if you're the kind of person interested in other peoples' lives (and not just the weird theories they have on psychology or linguistics or anything.) But I've also brought up why that's unfeasible: my lack of a life that would be interesting anyway.

   Today's post has nothing to do with that. Well, mildly- it's a sensitive thing. Originally I'd had those last few paragraphs scrapped together as part of a post that is for the most part unrelated (salvaging observations off of the cutting room floor of "hipsternerd" posts,) but I think this can stand on its own legs. The first paragraph in this sentence I'm just keeping as an artifact from that, and also because I'm too late and undermotivated to edit to correction of anything I say anymore (including the order of the first three sentences of this word.) And also I had been going to go on on a similar but different tack, but it's well too close to midnight to continue on with that plan (critters!). And also I like keeping the artifacts.

So Much All the Time

   You feel empty inside. Impatient. Like your time is being wasted. "Generation Multitask" covers it somewhat of course; it's kind of endemic. The productivity versus business debate is not something I'd really intended to get into here- I doubt I'd be able to add anything worthwhile to the conversation, and the fact that it was even in the air at all is a possibility I only just now realized. But no.

   We have such multitaskability, living when we do. The debate of attention spans is also not what I'm meaning to get into. We can afford to be choosy with how we spend our time, is what it is. (Choosing incorrectly, just browsing mindlessly and networking socially, is back to the "just feel busy" mentality that so much soothes the surface while addressing next to none of the deeper secrets of happiness, such as being genuinely productive and having purpose and, dear me, here I go off on a "productivity versus debate" tangent; getting right back on track now.)

   The internet is said to be a tool, but not a neutral one. We're influenced by these things far deeper than we realize. So it's held. But we've been anthropomorphizing computers ever since they came out- building up tales of artificially intelligent systems, something that will always be more fantasy than sci-fi. Fundamentally there's little to no difference between today's supercomputers and Jacquard's Loom. Would a loom get up and walk? But we treat computers as magic, and we're far more comfortable imbuing. Robots as we conceive them today have almost nothing to do with the soul-searching (organic!) Frankenstein's Adams first presented in RUR-- computers had nothing to do with the original vision, much like how Darwin's theories overshadowed those of Mendel at first, crowding from the market the very mechanism by which evolution could be explained. Computational capacity does not equal intelligence. A tool is a tool.

   That doesn't stop the way we use tools and think of tools from being deeply influential to how we think about the tasks for which we're using the tools in the first place, however. The realization that it's not a problem with electronic media but rather one of its virtues, that it makes information so easy to assemble and disseminate that it makes time away from the computer impractical in comparison, is one that's, very, adjective, in some way... We can afford to multitask, or more accurately microtask. Business (that is to say, busy-ness) over productivity can lead to emotional drain, and often does. We try to fill the hollow in with more business, but it's like, hormonal type things, blocking off the receptory things, making the brain feel good but preventing real good stuff from, hitting the, like, neurons...

   The feeling, anyway, happens to me all the time- I try to do productive things, and it helps, but I still think there's a guilt complex in that my lifestyle remains generally sedentary, and though I don't have the junkiest diet, I have a "diet" at all, so like I'm kind of plump, and although that's a beautiful thing when you're naked I want to look good with clothes on too... That all can be worked out, though. All those empty feelings, turns out, had root causes.

   But sometimes the feeling of dissatisfaction is just genuinely general human paranoia and meaningless guilt. Which, happens.

   Happened to me a week or so ago, that feeling- maybe more, but, that's not the important thing. I felt bleak and listless, like my day had generally been wasted. And then...

   I took a niiice bath, and my day no longer felt so empty.

A New Thing

   It was kind of a spur of the moment choice.

Just a couple of months after starting this blog, I posted a post titled My First Blog, which is about- well, maybe you should just click on that link. Everything following will make so much more sense if you do. You clicked on it?

   Yes?

   Good. Now I'm going to explain what you just read, because I know you like to lie. In my dreams, a couple of times at least, there was this blogcumwiki website, sort of put on by me and sort of put on by the fictional version of my teenage self, a domain I'd hijacked at some point from some other guy and now used as not only blog and wiki stuff, but also this e-attic for dumping all of my files into. I caught its name once, and though I did have the opportunity to write it down while I was awake and could still remember, it was so utterly trivial that I did not bother to. Nonetheless, its name was something along the lines of, Things That Don't Even Come Back Around. And it was "A real thing."

   And you can probably guess where I'm going with all of this.

   I've managed to recreate the fictional blog in real life, to my best extent so far. Defictionalize it. Little doubt I'll keep experimenting till I come up with a more perfect likeness to the real fake one. It'll be a work in progress, but even now, hey check it out, thingsthatdontevencomebackaround.blogspot.com truly is a real thing. The link in that post My First Blog now works.

   There's nothing on it at press time, but that will probably have changed by the time you read this (assuming you don't hang onto my every word and catch posts right as they come out.) Die Like a Disney Villain has a fairly regular postup time of 8:30 am. I went over in the post of yesterday and the day before (I consider the posts of yesterday and the day before as basically one and the same post) how the 8:30 am postup time gives me genuine motivation to get things accomplished- how I'm clocked in. 8:30 is kind of the perfect time in the morning, this sweet Goldilocks zone between earliness and lateness- it's pure just-right sweetness. But 9:30 isn't so much of a downgrade after that. So for an hour after I have my post up here at 8:30, I'll then focus my efforts onto the other blog, seriously clocked in.

   Hey hey hey hey, I can hear you say (I can hear you say)* - why would you need a second blog? What would even be on it? My project of watching The Lion King 365 times in a row, I've realized the future is still so uncertain it would be best not to do yet (...but which I will need to do soon (that being, within a few years) lest my actual life burden me down with actual responsibilities and pull me away from the project.) The project itself and the decision to go through with a new blog are themselves one and the same project. With more jumps this time- because jumps are cool.

   From 8:30 to 9:30, clocked in, I will be working on an idea that came from a dream, an idea for something I thought at first I could turn into a pretty decent short story, but soon realized had far broader richer potential. It is the story of a man with the supernatural ability to act as a target for supernatural trouble. I've already gotten a bit into it, and I think it could have legs and even wings if I'm willing to put the effort to run and fly into it. And now, sigh, I suppose I'll have to follow through; I'm kind of constrained to it now. Honestly, without our obligations we'd never be anywhere.