I had a conversation the other night that caught my attention by highlighting how different people understand the same words. We were talking about the statement, "I love you," and how casually or seriously it is used in a relationship, and how one partner may use it before the other is prepared to make the same declaration.

I contrasted that I love easily, but my trust is more difficult to earn, and that makes it easier for me to navigate a situation where someone may feel more intensely than I. People say "I love you" all the time and mean a variety of things, but very rarely does one gaze soulfully into another's eyes and say solemnly, "Honey, I really trust you."

My conversation partner immediately leaped to discuss trust in terms of a lack of fear of sexual or emotional infidelity. This came as almost a shock to me, and to be honest I don't recall exactly what was said to me next, because I didn't mean trust in those terms at all.

When I trust, I believe I am safe from verbal abuse.
When I trust, I believe I am safe from intimidation.
When I trust, I believe I am safe from manipulation.
When I trust, I believe I am safe from physical harm.

When I trust, I feel supported, whether that is in the form of cheering my endeavors or respecting my views in the different areas of social justice.
When I trust, I am confident that I and my feelings and my potential reactions are considered - and if they do not inform a decision that is made, they at least inform the manner in which I am told.

And as much I want to trust, I also seek to be trustworthy. Love can survive unrequited; trust cannot.

Or maybe less public, and more "potentially useful to people who know me."

( On truth and trust )

The closer one gets to me, the more refined is my definition. As it should be, I suppose. Many people meet my definitions of a friend, few of these meet my definitions of a girlfriend or a brother, and none so far have met my definition of a partner.( Read more... )

These descriptions have been gut-level for me for some time, but only recently (like, today) have I assigned labels and joined the two into definitions for my own reference.

http://liptonrm.livejournal.com/183821.html

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who can see something other than sexism in the use (and death) of women on this show. Starting at paragraph 6 (appearing to be a second section), liptonrm illuminates a message that really can't be sent with male characters unless anvils are applied.

On the other hand, the point is made in comments that "somehow a problem only finds resolution or has merit when men pay attention to it and validate a woman's feelings," using Bedtime Stories as an example. It sounds a little like the public assumption being tackled by vidding fandom, which is that "vidding" only started when men started doing it -- refusing to acknowledge the decades of female creativity that came before youtube and AMVs. In the case of Supernatural, I'm not sure whether that's an unconscious message or the inevitable consequence of having the primary point-of-view characters be two brothers.

(Edit: this started as an email to a friend)
I’ve been musing about some things you’ve said, such as how you felt like you got more impression of me from my fiction than from “assigned” papers. It occurred to me that my view of fiction versus non-fiction is very disparate. In my mind, non-fiction is written to make others understand, and fiction is written to make others feel. Of course, fiction isn’t successful at drawing emotion from others unless the auther can find and illuminate a point of commonality – that is, I must write my own feelings in a way others can relate to.

Autobiographies, in my head, fall into the category of non-fiction. That is, expressing emotion in an autobiography seems counter to the definition.

This may be (probably is) something unique to me.

At any rate, I’m caught between two views: should I lean toward fiction because I’m familiar with that avenue of “getting in touch” with emotion? Or is it too much of an obstacle since there is potential to assign characters my emotions but deny them as being mine? Is recognition of that risk enough to mitigate it?

Reading some of the things I’ve written in the past, it’s really easy to see my characters acting out my pains, my angers, and my (in some cases, seriously messed up) views of the world. Whether that holds for the future remains to be seen.

There are two types of gift-giving in my little, psychotic world.  On "Occasions" (such as Christmas, birthdays, and Valentine's), which are when gifts are given to people who should matter, and "random, stealth-gifting," when is when gifts are given to people who actually do.

Obviously, there is some overlap, since some gifts on Occasions are also given to people who matter.  But random gifts are almost never given to people who don't.

The way I see it, lots of things change at the quantum and cosmic levels.  On the quantum level, nothing ever stays where you left it, and you can't really know everything about anything.  On the cosmic level, space can no longer be perceived as flat.  But what gets me is when it is implied that knowing these "new" things about the quantum and cosmic somehow changes the way the world works (and has worked for millenia) at the macroscopic level.  Schroedinger's cat is an interesting analogy for demonstrating uncertainty principles and wave functions, but if you take a real cat and put it in a real box, it is going to really die at a real point in time.

Anyway, theories on the mutability of time and space become interesting to me when they explain previously observed phenomena - or when a satisfactory test can be designed.  But the type of thing that is frustrating to me is, for example, white holes.  While I understand the question "Where does everything that falls into a black hole go?" white holes are, if you'll forgive the pun, an idea from whole cloth.  They have never been observed, no indirect evidence has ever been observed, and the explanation is, frankly, unnecessary because black holes aren't actually holes.

So maybe time is an approximation.  So be it.  F=GMm/(r^2) is an approximation - but it's a useful one.  Kepler's laws are approximations - but useful ones.  Maybe my irritation is a function of incomplete information.  Because what I frequently hear is "This new cool thing we think might be so!" without any application.  My first reaction is "How is that useful to anyone?"  It feels like someone (oh, the ubiquitous "someone") is trying to take what could be valid and useful information and using it to show other people how little they know.  This is NOT inherently wrong, but when they are doing it not to encourage people to learn but to encourage them to be fearful, I get a little cantankerous.  When one says the rules we know are wrong but don't replace them with something else, it leads to an excess of unease.

So, meh.  Apparently I felt like ranting.

Once upon a time there was a little boy who promised his pen pal that he'd mail her rocks from where he lived.  Every day, he dutifully taped an address label and postage to a stone the size of his fist, and put it in the mailbox.

The postman never collected them.  After several months went by, the postman was joking with other letter carriers about the dumbest things they'd seen go through the mail, and the postman mentioned the rocks just as his supervisor was walking by.

"Do these rocks have addresses?" asked the supervisor.

"Yes," answered the postman, surprised.

"Do they have adequate postage?" asked the supervisor.

"Well, yes," the sheepish postman responded.

"Then it's your duty to deliver them," said the supervisor.  "See that it gets done."

The next day, the postman found himself confronted by the pile of fifty or sixty half-pound rocks, and he sorely wished that he hadn't let the job pile up.

( Why this came to mind )

It feels to me that Rodney's reputation for weapons inadequacy is undeserved, so I went through all the episodes I could remember him using a gun.

( Includes spoilers for Common Ground )

Details gathered from transcripts at Gateworld, where it's way too easy to see spoilers for much of Season 3.  However, I'm not particularly sad about this.

One of the things I learned back in EFM yr 1 was that in some (ancient) cultures the practice of giving captives new names was in order to demonstrate power and control over the captives.  E.g., Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah were assigned new names Belteshazzar, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednigo when they were captured by Nebuchadezzar (Daniel 1:1-7).

( Contains spoilers for SGA: Common Ground (and others) )

So, um, marriage and similar commitments have been on my mind lately.  And then I read In the Hands of Yes by Hth.

( Read more... )

I'm not solid on just what I'm taking from that, but, yeah.

There's always a tension between "Look how good the world (or this country) is" and "Look how good it should be."

You don't have to say something is bad in order to say, "Let's make it better."

Quite likely the awesomest thing that ever awesomed.

Joss Whedon about Equality Now

Didja know he's directing the next Wonder Woman thingie?  I hear it's a movie.

The nice thing about the future is that it gets smaller and more manageable as more and more of it moves to the past.

The not so nice thing about it is that there are so many factors involved.

Will I win a USAF commission or not?
Will I go to Seminary or not?
Will I enter a Mathematics grad program or not?
Will any of these things happen before my current job ends or after?

All of that depends on what I apply for.  And that depends largely on me.

( History )

( futures and dreams )

I'm now home for the holiday, and thrilled to see my parents. My brothers won't be able to get here until after I leave, but my sister and her offspring will be here tomorrow. While I'm in Coos Bay, I have a list of three things that Must Be Done:
1) Visit Shore Acres Botanical Garden and view the Christmas Light display
2) Take the family to "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe."
3) Sit in front of the fire with family.

Yesterday I had a wonderful evening with butterfly and her family. We saw Narnia and then went out for dinner before they came to my church for the midnight mass. I quite enjoyed their company. Finding a restaurant that was open was quite an adventure, but we finally had a lovely meal at Applebee's.

This morning, I picked up my boys after KOP and Princess came back from church (having skipped the morning mass myself in favor of wrapping the last of the presents and cleaning the house before I left) and headed south. No traffic to speak of, and we made decent time. Dinner was ready when we arrived - turkey and sweet potatoes, which are quite the yum. I've totally gone overbudget on my carbs the last few days, and I missed a couple work-outs at the gym due to extreme soreness (and lack of time).

Blessing I'm counting: I'm finally learning what it's like to have true friends.

Something that struck me today: What makes this day unlike any other day? ( Read more... )

I have a very love-hate relationship with Christmas.

I love the Christmas meaning -- God becoming incarnate to save the world. I love the Christmas services and traditions, like the nativity scene and moving Joseph and Mary week by week closer to the stable until Christmas, then bringing baby Jesus and the angels out of hiding. I love Christmas carols. I love giving gifts.

I hate surprises. No, actually, I hate having an audience while I react to surprises. I never feel like I'm doing it "right," because my natural reaction to any surprise (even good ones) is to shut down and be impassive. This is not the thing gift-givers like to see, and so I feel like I'm putting on a show if I have to react in public.

( I hate feeling poor, and I hate people deliberately missing the point )

This is where it gets frustrating.

I hate choices. That's not exactly right. I don't mind making a choice, I mind have umpteen-bazillion different options to choose from. Being "able to do anything I want" is not exactly a blessing in my book.
( Read more... )

Oftimes, particularly with verbs, I approach definitions as mathematical equivalents, as in, since y = 2x, 2y-5 = 2(2x)-5.

[one should] = [the best course of action is to]
one should not = the best course of action is to not

However, commutative and distribution laws appear to not apply.

to not [verb] ≠ not to [verb]
one should not [verb] ≠ the best course of action is not to [verb]

Am I being far pickier than the rest of the world?

The difference in, for example, "to not apply" versus "not to apply" is minor but distinct to me. But it seems most English speakers don't perceive one (especially in light of rules about splitting infinitives, which likely came about because it isn't possible in Latin, so one should avoid splitting infinitives when translating from Latin to English).

"To not [verb]" = "to actively or consciously avoid [-ing infinitive verb]"
"Not to [verb]" = "to do anything other than [verb]"

The former is more active and the latter is more passive.

I wonder how much of this is influenced by the first years of two foreign languages, particularly Latin, where my instructor was also the AP English teacher.

butterfly: For every aphorism, there's an equal and opposite one. Like "Out of sight; out of mind" and "Absence makes the heart grow fonder." Or "Many hands make light work" and "Too many cooks spoil the broth."
jic: It's the Law of Conservation of Platitudes!

( Speaking of Conservation Laws )