A new date on human-altered bone from Bluefish Cave puts humans on the American side of the Bering Strait in the middle of the Last Glacial Maximum. At this point this is only a surprise to those who haven't been paying attention, but firm data points are always welcome, and frankly any advance in science is to be celebrated.
On the personal side, I feel obliged to inform long-term readers of some recent losses that are primarily of personal impact. Moby Dent, the Great White Car, is officially dead. We do not yet know the name of the Subaru Forester who has assumed his duties, and it may never matter to blog readers, depending on my future capacity to undertake adventures abroad in the future. Moby was not a car we would ever have chosen on our own, having been bought cheap from a family member in a time of crisis, but he got us where we needed to go that the buses couldn't take us for almost 30 years, and kept patching up and plugging along long after we really should have replaced him. He was the first and is still the only car I've ever known intimately, since I didn't even learn to drive till we'd had him for quite some time, so it is hard not to be sentimental about him. But the Forester is the first car we've chosen together and this is a cheering thing.
We need cheering things, because shortly before Christmas both the cats were mauled by stray dogs. Miss Thai is currently washing herself next to the keyboard, though things were iffy for awhile there; but thanks to the neighbors who drove off the dogs and took us straight to the vet (Moby being immobile and the Forester not yet chosen), the efforts of both our regular vet and the Animal Emergency Room, and the help of our friends who provided further mobility as needed, she survived and is doing well.
Dr. Bruce, the cat in the header, had his neck broken outright, and was dead before anybody knew the dogs had struck.
And Thai, who was his littermate, does not like to sleep with us without him anymore, unless the night is very cold.
Showing posts with label animals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label animals. Show all posts
Monday, January 16, 2017
Thursday, June 19, 2014
Procrastination for Whippersnappers
Since I am officially middle-aged, it is incumbent on me to find some way in which "kids today" are deficient. I've been struggling with this for some time, since for the most part kids today look fine to me; at least as in tune with their surroundings as I am, and no more incompetent than I was at their age. But yesterday, as I dug cat hair out of my keyboard, it hit me: Kids today don't know how to really knuckle down and procrastinate!
Oh, yes, they can waste time on the internet, but that doesn't take any skill! Just get a few social networking sites - Facebook is all the rage, but Tumbler, I find, is even better because it's more content-based than personal; people are fighting for causes and telling stories and sharing fanfic there in an in-depth and engaging way that doesn't require you to know or care about the people you follow as friends or professional associates. Either way, you join into a vast perpetual motion machine of distraction which is far too easy for a true procrastinator. A kind of Cliff's Notes version, if you will. But what happens to these social-media-addicted kids when they turn the internet off and get their games taken away? They will find themselves with their backs to the wall, helplessly completing projects and doing assigned chores, that's what!
Don't let this happen to your kids! Teach them the nitty-gritty rules of procrastination:
1) Have pets. Whether it's needing to go outside right now, clogging machinery with shed hair, or simply trying to participate in anything you're doing, pets are the No. 1 Procrastination Aid. After all, they are alive, they depend on you, they're adorable, and the cat hair really does need to be cleaned out of the keyboard if you want to be able to keep typing. What kind of monster puts homework ahead of the well-being of a living creature who loves you more than anything? "I don't want to disturb the cat" is an excuse any family member worth living with will sheepishly have to acknowledge as valid; because everyone in a pet-owning household will be using this procrastination technique and therefore has to allow it in everybody else.
(In fact, in my house "catlap syndrome" is a recognized disorder and a legitimate reason to ask other people to do things for you. Shortly after our housemate moved across the street, my husband, a friend, and I were all lined up on the couch, each catlapped, and realized that none of us could reach the remote control. Our friend suggested that we call across the street to tell M we were catlapped and needed him to come change the channel. We couldn't, because none of us could reach a phone; but we all agreed, he would have complied - and he confirmed this when asked.)
(We do not spoil our cats. Spoiled things are nasty and our cats are sweet.)
2) Always be on the lookout for ways to increase your efficiency! Trimming your nails while your computer is booting just makes sense! The fact that you then realize that you got egg under them while you were scraping the scorched breakfast out of the frying pan and then start cleaning them meticulously, which takes you into the bathroom, where you remember you haven't flossed recently and that it's past time to get the fluoride residue off your toothbrushes, is not your fault! And while your programs are loading, you can take the crusty soap dish down to the kitchen to put into the dishwasher while you grab a drink and make a fresh pitcher of tea and oh yeah you haven't taken out the compost this morning. Moreover, an organized and simple filing system is essential and can take all day to set up while the things on your to-do list wait their turn. For sheer time-sucking attention focus, social media has nothing on alphabetization, cross-referencing, labeling, and buying specialized containers for all your paperwork, art, tools, supplies, and whatnot; and it has the major advantage of looking exactly like work, so that you can fool yourself into thinking you're being productive in a way you can't possibly pull off when watching cat videos.
3) Be meticulous! The reality of the world is that dirt will always be present, so if you always clean up dirt as soon as you see it, you are bound to look around and see dirt the moment you begin to not want to do something you really need to do. (See Rule 1; pets are a big help with this.)
4) Be available! Other people's work is much more doable than your own, so make yourself available to anyone who needs help. Leave the door open. Set no boundaries. Always say yes.
5) Require perfection! Nothing postpones completion of old projects or the undertaking of new ones like insisting on a flawless result every time. You've always missed something - a typo, a grammatical error, a poor color choice, a sentence that is two words longer than the ideal.
I despair for the citizens of tomorrow if these simple principles are lost to time. Please, teach the basics, or the future will be dark indeed.
Oh, yes, they can waste time on the internet, but that doesn't take any skill! Just get a few social networking sites - Facebook is all the rage, but Tumbler, I find, is even better because it's more content-based than personal; people are fighting for causes and telling stories and sharing fanfic there in an in-depth and engaging way that doesn't require you to know or care about the people you follow as friends or professional associates. Either way, you join into a vast perpetual motion machine of distraction which is far too easy for a true procrastinator. A kind of Cliff's Notes version, if you will. But what happens to these social-media-addicted kids when they turn the internet off and get their games taken away? They will find themselves with their backs to the wall, helplessly completing projects and doing assigned chores, that's what!
Don't let this happen to your kids! Teach them the nitty-gritty rules of procrastination:
1) Have pets. Whether it's needing to go outside right now, clogging machinery with shed hair, or simply trying to participate in anything you're doing, pets are the No. 1 Procrastination Aid. After all, they are alive, they depend on you, they're adorable, and the cat hair really does need to be cleaned out of the keyboard if you want to be able to keep typing. What kind of monster puts homework ahead of the well-being of a living creature who loves you more than anything? "I don't want to disturb the cat" is an excuse any family member worth living with will sheepishly have to acknowledge as valid; because everyone in a pet-owning household will be using this procrastination technique and therefore has to allow it in everybody else.
(In fact, in my house "catlap syndrome" is a recognized disorder and a legitimate reason to ask other people to do things for you. Shortly after our housemate moved across the street, my husband, a friend, and I were all lined up on the couch, each catlapped, and realized that none of us could reach the remote control. Our friend suggested that we call across the street to tell M we were catlapped and needed him to come change the channel. We couldn't, because none of us could reach a phone; but we all agreed, he would have complied - and he confirmed this when asked.)
(We do not spoil our cats. Spoiled things are nasty and our cats are sweet.)
2) Always be on the lookout for ways to increase your efficiency! Trimming your nails while your computer is booting just makes sense! The fact that you then realize that you got egg under them while you were scraping the scorched breakfast out of the frying pan and then start cleaning them meticulously, which takes you into the bathroom, where you remember you haven't flossed recently and that it's past time to get the fluoride residue off your toothbrushes, is not your fault! And while your programs are loading, you can take the crusty soap dish down to the kitchen to put into the dishwasher while you grab a drink and make a fresh pitcher of tea and oh yeah you haven't taken out the compost this morning. Moreover, an organized and simple filing system is essential and can take all day to set up while the things on your to-do list wait their turn. For sheer time-sucking attention focus, social media has nothing on alphabetization, cross-referencing, labeling, and buying specialized containers for all your paperwork, art, tools, supplies, and whatnot; and it has the major advantage of looking exactly like work, so that you can fool yourself into thinking you're being productive in a way you can't possibly pull off when watching cat videos.
3) Be meticulous! The reality of the world is that dirt will always be present, so if you always clean up dirt as soon as you see it, you are bound to look around and see dirt the moment you begin to not want to do something you really need to do. (See Rule 1; pets are a big help with this.)
4) Be available! Other people's work is much more doable than your own, so make yourself available to anyone who needs help. Leave the door open. Set no boundaries. Always say yes.
5) Require perfection! Nothing postpones completion of old projects or the undertaking of new ones like insisting on a flawless result every time. You've always missed something - a typo, a grammatical error, a poor color choice, a sentence that is two words longer than the ideal.
I despair for the citizens of tomorrow if these simple principles are lost to time. Please, teach the basics, or the future will be dark indeed.
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
Interlude, with Animals
I realize that it's dark and Miss Thai is not sitting on my keyboard. So I go down to the back door and call through the screen, singing the Thai song (which is the chorus of "The Boxer" with a string of "Thais" instead of "La la li") to summon her. It's dark. Something white, but not white enough, approaches with cat-like approaching sounds. I turn on the outside light to be sure.
"You called?" The raccoon on the steps sits up and twitches her whiskers at me.
"You are not my cat," I say.
"But I live here," says the raccoon. "You might as well let me in."
"Sorry," I say, and go call out the front door, where Thai appears. "Where have you been?" She demands. "Get up there on the computer so I can snub you!"
I know it ought to bother me that raccoons live in our attic, but they keep the rats out and in any case none of the people who were supposed to bid on projects to exclude them from the attic has ever gotten back to us. I believe the height of our roof terrifies them. The coons don't get into the trash because there's nothing worth their while in the trash. It all goes on the compost heap. I don't really garden enough to keep a compost heap, but it's well worth it for keeping the wildlife and the sour smells outside rather than in.
And Thai typically snubs me elaborately for five minutes or so. If she really wants to punish me she stays outside out of my line of sight as I call and call and imagine horrible deaths she might have suffered, then appears magically as soon as my husband comes out to look for her.
"You called?" The raccoon on the steps sits up and twitches her whiskers at me.
"You are not my cat," I say.
"But I live here," says the raccoon. "You might as well let me in."
"Sorry," I say, and go call out the front door, where Thai appears. "Where have you been?" She demands. "Get up there on the computer so I can snub you!"
I know it ought to bother me that raccoons live in our attic, but they keep the rats out and in any case none of the people who were supposed to bid on projects to exclude them from the attic has ever gotten back to us. I believe the height of our roof terrifies them. The coons don't get into the trash because there's nothing worth their while in the trash. It all goes on the compost heap. I don't really garden enough to keep a compost heap, but it's well worth it for keeping the wildlife and the sour smells outside rather than in.
And Thai typically snubs me elaborately for five minutes or so. If she really wants to punish me she stays outside out of my line of sight as I call and call and imagine horrible deaths she might have suffered, then appears magically as soon as my husband comes out to look for her.
Friday, May 31, 2013
Completion?
I think I have the revisions done. I think.
The trouble with revisions is, you're never sure and you keep going back for one more read-through and there's always something and then you wake up in the middle of the night...
I'll worry about it Monday. In the interim, I have a cat to worry about. Bruce is limping and the cortisone shot didn't help enough. He hasn't woken me up all week. How am I supposed to function without my alarm cat? But Thai apparently thinks he's still hale enough to be boss cat because she hasn't taken over the job. So instead of Government Canyon tomorrow, I go to the vet.
The trouble with revisions is, you're never sure and you keep going back for one more read-through and there's always something and then you wake up in the middle of the night...
I'll worry about it Monday. In the interim, I have a cat to worry about. Bruce is limping and the cortisone shot didn't help enough. He hasn't woken me up all week. How am I supposed to function without my alarm cat? But Thai apparently thinks he's still hale enough to be boss cat because she hasn't taken over the job. So instead of Government Canyon tomorrow, I go to the vet.
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Rat Hard vs. Driving Hard
Once, I had a year from hell. So did everyone around me. That was one of the things that made it so hellish.
I had to finally learn to drive during that year, because Damon was too sick to do it and we couldn't afford to be dependent on our friends - who were also having hellish years and none of whom lived within a mile of us - for rides to the doctor. I found it enormously difficult, but I operated on the presumption that if I had to do something, I could do it, so I took driving lessons.
During the early part of that year, our cats, who are the worst hunters in the world, double-teamed a rat, chased it all over the house, and mortally wounded it. This was all deduced from forensic evidence - I had to clean up the rat blood. At first we assumed that the rat had eventually gotten away, but in a few days we realized that it had been mortally wounded. And died. Somewhere in the downstairs hall closet where Damon keeps his comic book boxes.
Damon at this time was bedridden, so while he slept I got into old clothes and rubber gloves, gathered "shovels and rakes and implements of destruction," and started taking the closet apart. Cleaning up deceased animals has always been Damon's job because I am a wimp, but I told myself I had to do this, so I could do it, so I gritted my teeth and got on with it.
And then I found the rat. And I couldn't.
I tried. Honest, I did. But it was as if a physical force field went up between me and it. I tried till I cried and I could not make myself do it. I couldn't even make myself use one of the long implements, much less reach into the closet with my rubber-gloved hands. After the first glimpse, I couldn't make myself look into the closet. I finally had to admit to myself that I had reached the limits of my strength and there was nothing to do but ask someone else to do the job I couldn't.
So I called M, our old housemate, who is completely unreliable about daily things like taking his turn at the dishes and getting his junk out of the high-traffic area and showing up on time for - anything - but who is completely reliable about responding to anyone he can interpret as a damsel in distress. M, I knew, would be delighted to clean up a dead rat so he could be my hero, if he happened to be at home. Which he was not. And his wife, who might or might not have been able to deal with a dead rat under normal circumstances, was home with the baby and a cold. But his brother happened to have dropped in on her, and he cheerfully came and cleared out the rat for me and I never had to look at or smell the thing again. And I had a new term in my personal vocabulary. A thing that is "rat hard" is too hard for me to do, even when I have to, and when I run up against that, then there's no point beating myself up about it. I just have to find another way.
The day after I discovered my limits that way, I had a driving lesson. We were getting down to the wire on the number of lessons I had left, and the instructor was teaching me to parallel park. This is a crucial skill to learn when driving in Texas, because if you can do it, you'd pretty much have to run over somebody to fail the rest of the test, and if you fail that, you fail the whole thing. Parallel parking is the first item in the test procedure and if you fail it they stop the test right there and you can go home to practice parallel parking some more. So we were out there in the empty parking lot with the cones and the imaginary Mercedes on either side and the problem was that I can't see straight.
It was before I learned why I can't see straight, but I'd known for years that I can't and it's one of the reasons I'd never bothered getting my license. However, I'd been walking under the influence of this peculiarity for most of my life and I found that most of my compensatory habits served me just as well in the car as when walking - until it came time to go in reverse. I was hopeless at going backwards. I couldn't tell when I was straight, I couldn't tell when I was turning, I couldn't tell where the bumper was, and I hit one or the other imaginary Mercedes every time. We spent half an hour just working on reversing and I just couldn't do it right.
At which point I put my head down on the steering wheel and told the instructor about the rat, ending the story with: "But this isn't like that. This is something I can learn to do."
And eventually I did do it, though it'd be a bit much to say I learned how to parallel park. I took me three tries to pass the driving test and I still can't line myself up parallel to and within the correct distance of the curb without someone outside the car giving me hand signals. In the eight years since then I've parallel parked "in the wild" exactly once - but I did it without hitting the other cars and that was all I asked of myself.
So that was another addition to my personal vocabulary. Impossibly steep learning curves are only "driving hard," and at the end of a horrible spell of failing and trying again and crying with frustration and failing and trying again and failing and crying and failing eventually, if I don't throw in the towel and declare defeat, I will get it done.
So the first question I ask myself when faced with something that's too hard is, Is it rat hard, or only driving hard? Because if it's rat hard, I need to stop wasting time and find the way around it; but if it's driving hard, it's time to move on to the second question; which is, How bad do I want it? Is it worth the effort and frustration and stress of learning to do it? Because if it's not, I need to stop wasting time working at it; but if it is, I need to get on with it.
I have never met a creative problem that was more than "driving hard."
Whether this story and this distinction do you any good, I don't know. Here they are for what they're worth.
I had to finally learn to drive during that year, because Damon was too sick to do it and we couldn't afford to be dependent on our friends - who were also having hellish years and none of whom lived within a mile of us - for rides to the doctor. I found it enormously difficult, but I operated on the presumption that if I had to do something, I could do it, so I took driving lessons.
During the early part of that year, our cats, who are the worst hunters in the world, double-teamed a rat, chased it all over the house, and mortally wounded it. This was all deduced from forensic evidence - I had to clean up the rat blood. At first we assumed that the rat had eventually gotten away, but in a few days we realized that it had been mortally wounded. And died. Somewhere in the downstairs hall closet where Damon keeps his comic book boxes.
Damon at this time was bedridden, so while he slept I got into old clothes and rubber gloves, gathered "shovels and rakes and implements of destruction," and started taking the closet apart. Cleaning up deceased animals has always been Damon's job because I am a wimp, but I told myself I had to do this, so I could do it, so I gritted my teeth and got on with it.
And then I found the rat. And I couldn't.
I tried. Honest, I did. But it was as if a physical force field went up between me and it. I tried till I cried and I could not make myself do it. I couldn't even make myself use one of the long implements, much less reach into the closet with my rubber-gloved hands. After the first glimpse, I couldn't make myself look into the closet. I finally had to admit to myself that I had reached the limits of my strength and there was nothing to do but ask someone else to do the job I couldn't.
So I called M, our old housemate, who is completely unreliable about daily things like taking his turn at the dishes and getting his junk out of the high-traffic area and showing up on time for - anything - but who is completely reliable about responding to anyone he can interpret as a damsel in distress. M, I knew, would be delighted to clean up a dead rat so he could be my hero, if he happened to be at home. Which he was not. And his wife, who might or might not have been able to deal with a dead rat under normal circumstances, was home with the baby and a cold. But his brother happened to have dropped in on her, and he cheerfully came and cleared out the rat for me and I never had to look at or smell the thing again. And I had a new term in my personal vocabulary. A thing that is "rat hard" is too hard for me to do, even when I have to, and when I run up against that, then there's no point beating myself up about it. I just have to find another way.
The day after I discovered my limits that way, I had a driving lesson. We were getting down to the wire on the number of lessons I had left, and the instructor was teaching me to parallel park. This is a crucial skill to learn when driving in Texas, because if you can do it, you'd pretty much have to run over somebody to fail the rest of the test, and if you fail that, you fail the whole thing. Parallel parking is the first item in the test procedure and if you fail it they stop the test right there and you can go home to practice parallel parking some more. So we were out there in the empty parking lot with the cones and the imaginary Mercedes on either side and the problem was that I can't see straight.
It was before I learned why I can't see straight, but I'd known for years that I can't and it's one of the reasons I'd never bothered getting my license. However, I'd been walking under the influence of this peculiarity for most of my life and I found that most of my compensatory habits served me just as well in the car as when walking - until it came time to go in reverse. I was hopeless at going backwards. I couldn't tell when I was straight, I couldn't tell when I was turning, I couldn't tell where the bumper was, and I hit one or the other imaginary Mercedes every time. We spent half an hour just working on reversing and I just couldn't do it right.
At which point I put my head down on the steering wheel and told the instructor about the rat, ending the story with: "But this isn't like that. This is something I can learn to do."
And eventually I did do it, though it'd be a bit much to say I learned how to parallel park. I took me three tries to pass the driving test and I still can't line myself up parallel to and within the correct distance of the curb without someone outside the car giving me hand signals. In the eight years since then I've parallel parked "in the wild" exactly once - but I did it without hitting the other cars and that was all I asked of myself.
So that was another addition to my personal vocabulary. Impossibly steep learning curves are only "driving hard," and at the end of a horrible spell of failing and trying again and crying with frustration and failing and trying again and failing and crying and failing eventually, if I don't throw in the towel and declare defeat, I will get it done.
So the first question I ask myself when faced with something that's too hard is, Is it rat hard, or only driving hard? Because if it's rat hard, I need to stop wasting time and find the way around it; but if it's driving hard, it's time to move on to the second question; which is, How bad do I want it? Is it worth the effort and frustration and stress of learning to do it? Because if it's not, I need to stop wasting time working at it; but if it is, I need to get on with it.
I have never met a creative problem that was more than "driving hard."
Whether this story and this distinction do you any good, I don't know. Here they are for what they're worth.
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
The Bird in my Hand
Yesterday Health Crap descended and it would have been a waste of a day except...
...Bruce stood in the hallway penetrating my misery with deep-throated yowls, quite unlike his normal crying, until I got up to see what was the matter and why he didn't just come in and harass me.
And found him with a hummingbird in his mouth.
Yes, you read that right. Bruce, who hasn't a clue how to hunt anything more intelligent than a jingle ball, had caught the fastest bird on two wings. And he had no idea whatsoever what to do with it, so he'd brought it to me, presumably to make me feel better. (He is our resident doctor, after all, though his usual treatments are bedrest,purring, and acupuncture.) So I told him he was a bad cat and carefully took it away from him.
It was a juvenile, judging by the downy bits and the lack of any distinctive throat bar. Except for the rapid pulsing of the powerful little heart, I would have thought it was dead, with its wings held out stiff and fragile as a dragonfly's, it's feet curled up in a bed of downy feathers, and its eyes squeezed shut. I carried it out the back door and set it on the porch rail, where it balanced on its stomach, still frozen. I was afraid it might be too terrified, or have taken too much damage to those stiff little wings, to take off, so I turned away, wondering what I had that might make a nectar container suitable for an incapacitated hummingbird.
And when I turned back again, it was gone as if it had never been.
A real blogger would've taken a picture, but hey, a real blogger would have a digital camera by now.
...Bruce stood in the hallway penetrating my misery with deep-throated yowls, quite unlike his normal crying, until I got up to see what was the matter and why he didn't just come in and harass me.
And found him with a hummingbird in his mouth.
Yes, you read that right. Bruce, who hasn't a clue how to hunt anything more intelligent than a jingle ball, had caught the fastest bird on two wings. And he had no idea whatsoever what to do with it, so he'd brought it to me, presumably to make me feel better. (He is our resident doctor, after all, though his usual treatments are bedrest,purring, and acupuncture.) So I told him he was a bad cat and carefully took it away from him.
It was a juvenile, judging by the downy bits and the lack of any distinctive throat bar. Except for the rapid pulsing of the powerful little heart, I would have thought it was dead, with its wings held out stiff and fragile as a dragonfly's, it's feet curled up in a bed of downy feathers, and its eyes squeezed shut. I carried it out the back door and set it on the porch rail, where it balanced on its stomach, still frozen. I was afraid it might be too terrified, or have taken too much damage to those stiff little wings, to take off, so I turned away, wondering what I had that might make a nectar container suitable for an incapacitated hummingbird.
And when I turned back again, it was gone as if it had never been.
A real blogger would've taken a picture, but hey, a real blogger would have a digital camera by now.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Anthropomorphism? You Bet!
So yesterday we went to see the remake of Courage of Lassie, aka Lassie Goes to War, the one with Lassie played by a horse and adapted from a Michael Morpugo book.
That sounds snide, but you can always get me (and my mom; and for that matter Damon) with stories like this. I don't think I'm giving spoilers when I warn you to bring your hanky. I was okay for most of the movie, but the bit where our horse protagonist finally panicks on the Western front got me bad. My mom couldn't watch that bit. I think anybody who has ever had an animal friend, or personal experience with barbed wire, will have trouble with it.
It is common to dismiss this sort of reaction as sentimental and anthropomorphic. And I am pretty darn given to anthropomorphism. How much? Well -
I am so anthropmorphic that I am uncomfortable carrying stuffed animals and dolls with their heads down. When I see and handle my old toys I still get a strong sense of their personalities, and I talk to them on those occasions - especially Soda (a pink dog), Thomasina (a pink cat), and Scratchbit (a formerly pink plush doll with a vinyl head). Scratchbit's personality is so real to me that I just laughed writing her name; not because the name is ridiculous, which I know it is, but in the way you laugh when you suddenly recall an old friend.
I am so anthropomorphic that I have conversations with my cats, and frequently translate their conversational contributions for others. That sounds noxious and cutesy, but the fact is - they demonstrate, through action, that I'm expressing a reasonable approximation of their points of view on a regular basis. My husband has caught the habit from me, and we sometimes find ourselves arguing against our own best interests as the puppets for Thai and Bruce.
I am so anthropomorphic that I feel vaguely that I owe it to Vidcund Curious to go back and play his life "right" after accidentally killing him in my earliest experimental Sims games. (Vidcund's entry on the SimsWiki makes him sound nasty; but even after playing him less than three sim days, I know better.) As I've discussed before, I have managed to invest a lot of character and emotion into a lot of little bundles of programming code in those games. It's not too much to say that I love some of them - in the same way that I love Scratchbit, which is not at all the way I love Damon or my Rev. Mom or even Bruce and Thai.
I am so anthropomorphic that I can, in a similar process, take a string of random numbers and a bare-bones context and find complex human characters in them for role-playing games; not just my characters, but NPCs. It's true that, since I do social RPGs and not computer ones, I get a lot of help with those, as all the players tend to play off each other to create the cast of each game. To that extent, all my friends are pretty anthropomorphic.
I am so anthropomorphic that I can find a complex character in an Agatha Christie novel (no, really! Read Crooked House, or Endless Night), a mediocre TV sitcom, a comic book, and a bunch of research on history, geography, archeology, anthropology - anything I read. I can see personality in a bare skull, or a lump of rock, under the right conditions.
Naturally, because I have such a strong tendency toward it, I regard anthropomorphism in a more positive light than do people who complain that we all have too much of it. On the whole, I think it's more a strength than a weakness, though it can be both. I'll probably return to this subject later - if I continued now I would write beyond a blog-reader's patience, and mire myself in incompletely articulated ideas. For now I think it's enough to state an opinion without offering the argument for it, as food for thought as we all head into a new year with new challenges, same as the old challenges.
I think the tendency to project human qualities onto inhuman things is a necessary part of our ability to imagine ourselves in the place of another, which is the prime manifestation of both our sense of self, and our capacity for compassion.
And I think that the capacity for seeing ourselves in others, human or inhuman, real or imaginary, animate or inanimate, is the first step toward understanding those things as they are.
And I think I am so anthropomorphic because I write, and that I write because I am so anthropomorphic.
And I wish you all a Merry New Year.
That sounds snide, but you can always get me (and my mom; and for that matter Damon) with stories like this. I don't think I'm giving spoilers when I warn you to bring your hanky. I was okay for most of the movie, but the bit where our horse protagonist finally panicks on the Western front got me bad. My mom couldn't watch that bit. I think anybody who has ever had an animal friend, or personal experience with barbed wire, will have trouble with it.
It is common to dismiss this sort of reaction as sentimental and anthropomorphic. And I am pretty darn given to anthropomorphism. How much? Well -
I am so anthropmorphic that I am uncomfortable carrying stuffed animals and dolls with their heads down. When I see and handle my old toys I still get a strong sense of their personalities, and I talk to them on those occasions - especially Soda (a pink dog), Thomasina (a pink cat), and Scratchbit (a formerly pink plush doll with a vinyl head). Scratchbit's personality is so real to me that I just laughed writing her name; not because the name is ridiculous, which I know it is, but in the way you laugh when you suddenly recall an old friend.
I am so anthropomorphic that I have conversations with my cats, and frequently translate their conversational contributions for others. That sounds noxious and cutesy, but the fact is - they demonstrate, through action, that I'm expressing a reasonable approximation of their points of view on a regular basis. My husband has caught the habit from me, and we sometimes find ourselves arguing against our own best interests as the puppets for Thai and Bruce.
I am so anthropomorphic that I feel vaguely that I owe it to Vidcund Curious to go back and play his life "right" after accidentally killing him in my earliest experimental Sims games. (Vidcund's entry on the SimsWiki makes him sound nasty; but even after playing him less than three sim days, I know better.) As I've discussed before, I have managed to invest a lot of character and emotion into a lot of little bundles of programming code in those games. It's not too much to say that I love some of them - in the same way that I love Scratchbit, which is not at all the way I love Damon or my Rev. Mom or even Bruce and Thai.
I am so anthropomorphic that I can, in a similar process, take a string of random numbers and a bare-bones context and find complex human characters in them for role-playing games; not just my characters, but NPCs. It's true that, since I do social RPGs and not computer ones, I get a lot of help with those, as all the players tend to play off each other to create the cast of each game. To that extent, all my friends are pretty anthropomorphic.
I am so anthropomorphic that I can find a complex character in an Agatha Christie novel (no, really! Read Crooked House, or Endless Night), a mediocre TV sitcom, a comic book, and a bunch of research on history, geography, archeology, anthropology - anything I read. I can see personality in a bare skull, or a lump of rock, under the right conditions.
Naturally, because I have such a strong tendency toward it, I regard anthropomorphism in a more positive light than do people who complain that we all have too much of it. On the whole, I think it's more a strength than a weakness, though it can be both. I'll probably return to this subject later - if I continued now I would write beyond a blog-reader's patience, and mire myself in incompletely articulated ideas. For now I think it's enough to state an opinion without offering the argument for it, as food for thought as we all head into a new year with new challenges, same as the old challenges.
I think the tendency to project human qualities onto inhuman things is a necessary part of our ability to imagine ourselves in the place of another, which is the prime manifestation of both our sense of self, and our capacity for compassion.
And I think that the capacity for seeing ourselves in others, human or inhuman, real or imaginary, animate or inanimate, is the first step toward understanding those things as they are.
And I think I am so anthropomorphic because I write, and that I write because I am so anthropomorphic.
And I wish you all a Merry New Year.
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