I said that "I don't do this" last week when Leonard Nimoy died, and I don't--really. I don't memorialize celebrities, but Leonard Nimoy was an exception.
And then Terry Pratchett died.
I was in class when I found out this morning--my students were working in groups, and I was trying to get a bit of grading done while they were working, and the Facebook notice flashed across my screen, and suddenly, I was having to hold back tears because my favorite author won't be writing anymore.
It's not just that Terry Pratchett is my favorite author. There's been precious little literary criticism written about him, and of it, some of it was written by me. I don't have anything published in a journal, but my entire master's thesis was about intertextuality in the Night Watch books from the Discworld series. When I first discovered Terry Pratchett, I spent a lot of money I didn't have to collect the books, and then I spent over a year immersed in Discworld as I studied it. Not long before I defended, Pratchett was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's--something he called "an embuggerance."
I live and love Star Trek, but there's something vastly different about living and loving a book series. You inhabit books differently than you do television or movies, because so much of it is you and what you bring to the table and how you imagine surroundings and characters. Even when I've seen adaptations of Pratchett's work, I still don't always see characters the way they are in the mini-series. Angua, in my mind, is a lot more like me than she is the character you see in Going Postal. (Of course, Death's granddaughter, Susan, was dead-on perfect in Hogfather.)
Reading Terry Pratchett's books was the first time I ever saw my father laugh out loud when reading. Even watching TV shows, my dad doesn't really laugh at jokes or anything--he might smile, but he's not very demonstrative when it comes to these things, and I don't think I'd ever seen him even crack a smile while reading. No, reading Terry Pratchett, my father laughed out loud, deep belly laughs that always crack you up to hear because someone is really tickled and you can't help but be tickled in return. He would even read bits and pieces out loud to my mom, which he never does!
After I read them, I got my friends to read them, and I don't know if I introduced Pratchett to my husband or not--I want to think that he'd heard of him before, but had never read it until he started dating me--but he's been rereading Pratchett's books of late himself.
How do you mourn the finest satirist of the last half century? Quotes from Death, one of Pratchett's anthropomorphic personifications (yes, that's a joke on Pratchett's part) have been coming up here and there. Mine said: DON'T THINK OF IT AS DYING, Death said. THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH. Pratchett's twitter announced his death with Death coming to visit - and a final tweet of "The End."
Neil Gaiman posted to his blog about Pratchett's death--but didn't have the words to express his grief and said they would have to come later. All I can say is that I am heartbroken over this, will probably shed some tears, and will go home to pick up Guards! Guards! with its tattered cover and broken spine and fall in love with Discworld all over again.
Showing posts with label life imitating lit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label life imitating lit. Show all posts
Thursday, March 12, 2015
Monday, February 18, 2013
The Care and Feeding of Your Depressive
No, believe it or not, I've not abandoned this blog, like I've abandoned so many other well-intentioned projects over the years. I've been reading plenty, I've been lucky enough to be added to a list of people who get to review certain projects for Viking/Penguin, and there's been tons going on. The Boy spent several months away from home out surveying, I've finished a chapter of my dissertation, I've been ghosting in and out as a staff writer for Tosche Station, and I made it through yet another semester. The end of my Ph.D. program is in sight within the next year, I think, and I might actually make it. But the problem has not been that I've had too much to do to write.
I've never made any secret of the fact that I have clinical depression and an anxiety disorder. I don't keep it a secret from anyone--family, friends, even my students often know that I have a mental illness. I'm open and candid about the fact that I have it because I know how hard it can be for people to seek help when they are having problems, and I very strongly believe that my openness about the subject can help lessen the social stigma attached to getting help for mental illness.
What I don't tell people is how severe my depression is. I'm on several different medications and I regularly see a doctor regarding my mood issues. Most of the time, my issues have been more related to anxiety, but recently, depression has once again become one of the issues that has come back up. Sometimes I honestly don't even notice the depression, except for the fact that I sleep between 12-15 hours a day. (At times, I have slept more, but The Boy has put a stop to that.) It's not until the medication kicks in really well at times and I'm more cheerful than I've been in ages that I remember what it's like to be the person I was in high school before this started.
It's also closely intertwined with my anxiety. In the last few months, I've been so agoraphobic that even the idea of leaving the house has caused me to burst into tears, and the only place I've been able to go has been to school. School, along with home, is safe, for some reason, and I can relax there, mostly. Still, there are days when I hide in my office and sometimes fight the urge to hide under my desk, even though I enjoy all of my officemates. The Boy wanted to go see his parents for several weekends in a row, but I simply could not face the idea of leaving home, even to go see my in-laws, who are as lovely, loving, and generous people as walk the earth.
The hardest part is trying to explain to my husband how I'm feeling. For being a writer, I'm crap with words most of the time, more so when depression is wearing me down, because that is the time when I want to talk the least. Often times, when I do manage to talk, I'm flippant, and I know that frustrates him, because while I'm talking, I'm still not being communicative. In fact, I'd thought about titling this post "The Care and Feeding of Your Depressive," because that's what I do when things get too serious--I make a joke, deflect it elsewhere, hold off the serious discussion.
But it's not a bad idea, in all seriousness. So here's my best shot--for my husband, for my family, for my friends, for the universe--the things I can't always say, the things that people like me can't always say, but need to. It's easier to write it than it is to talk about it.
1. I would give anything to be a Real Girl and to be the person you think I am.
Having depression sometimes feels like you've got someone working your puppet strings. You're going through the motions without ever really living. That's part of the reason it's hard to get involved in things, because it doesn't feel like it's actually you involved in the activity.
You can tell me that I'm beautiful, that you love me, that everything's going to be okay, and the voice in the back of my head is always going to be telling me that it's not true. Sometimes I can make it shut up and believe you. Sometimes I can't. But a lot of the time, that voice is also telling me that you fell in love with someone who was better, who wasn't as depressed, who functioned properly, who was cheerful and fun to be around. That voice is the voice that tells me that you would be better off with someone else who was right in the head.
2. I feel terrible.
I feel terrible on a ton of levels. There's the wet blanket of the depression. There's the heart-racing panic of an anxiety attack. For me, migraines come right along with anxiety attacks. Lots of people just experience general body aches and soreness from depression, actual physical symptoms that are no less real because they come from a mental source. I am tired all the time. A lot of the times, I really don't want to eat much. And I know that makes you worried. But then that leads to:
3. The Merry-Go-Round of Guilt.
I hate this. I already feel guilty for not being everything I think I should be for you. Then you want to help so badly, all the time, and it is so clear that you feel guilt for not being able to help, for not feeling like you are enough. Then that guilt comes back around for making you feel bad. It's less a merry-go-round than it is a gyre, circling around and around and never ending, whereas friction eventually causes a merry-go-round to stop.
Part of this is my fault. The depression makes me overly sensitive, and so I take every sigh, every tiny look of exasperation straight to heart. I appreciate the nods and the soft "Hey, call me if you need anything," but know that I won't call. There are a few people who I will vent to--but only vent, not cry to--because I can't deal with spreading that guilt elsewhere. There are some people who have to deal with it. I don't want to add that elsewhere.
4. Hulk go Smash
I don't want to say I have uncontrollable anger, because my anger is very definitely controlled--otherwise, countless dishes and household appliances would have been smashed by now, and there would be any number of people nursing wounds inflicted by my tongue. But it is always there lately. The urge to throw something, to put hit something, to rip something to shreds is bubbling below the surface, and there's little that would fill me with as much satisfaction as being set loose in a ceramic factory slated for destruction.
I don't know where this is coming from. It's something I've got to discuss with my doctor, because it's something that's been coming up again and again lately, more often as I get frustrated, usually with myself or with someone close to me, usually related to the merry-go-round of guilt because I simply want it to stop, and throwing something would be punctuation, the exclamation point to it all.
5. I'm trying.
It doesn't look like it. It looks like I'm lying on the couch, it looks like I'm diving into a book or the internet, or sleeping to get away. Yes, sometimes that's true. But I am trying. Part of the reason I'm so tired is because I am fighting every minute of the day. I try to do things to keep my energy up. I listen to really awful pop music because the beat keeps me up and going. I had a really awful caffeine addiction going (I have had to stop that, though). I try to have my classes scheduled as early as possible in the morning.
That also means I have to prioritize. If I've spent all day at school, then no, I don't want to go out to eat or hang out that evening. I'm tired, I've spent all my energy dealing with people, and I'm done fighting for the day. I have to put my energy where it's most needed. When you're suffering from agoraphobia, sometimes that means that you don't even have the energy to go to the grocery. And trust me, it sucks.
So why am I sleeping? Or reading some trashy book? Because for a brief moment in time, it shuts my brain down long enough, either by shutting it down in sleep, or by living some other existence in fiction, that my own is not so overwhelming.
As far as panic attacks go, I have no idea what sets them off. Sometimes I have a clear idea. Other days, I simply wake up with them. Sometimes they simply blindside me, and I find myself wanting to start crying for no reason. But most of the time, I can control myself, and you'll never know I was having one. I'd rather have it that way.
There is no "just getting over this." If you've ever said that to someone with depression or other illness, you should be ashamed of yourself for perpetuating the myth that mental illness is not a real, valid illness, and you are partly responsible for every crime committed by a person with a mental illness who was not able to receive the help they needed.
6. The fact that my existence is sometimes overwhelming to me has nothing to do with you.
And I have news for some people out there. I can and do pray about this. But continuing to have depression is not a measure of my faith or a sign that I do not pray enough or a sign that I believe things that God does not approve of.
This is my hope. This is what keeps me going when I think everything is falling apart around me, even when I know better. This is what helps me when I think that everyone else would be better off if I retreated from their lives and just lived my existence by myself with my cats, away from everyone else.
And hope is a thing with feathers.
I've never made any secret of the fact that I have clinical depression and an anxiety disorder. I don't keep it a secret from anyone--family, friends, even my students often know that I have a mental illness. I'm open and candid about the fact that I have it because I know how hard it can be for people to seek help when they are having problems, and I very strongly believe that my openness about the subject can help lessen the social stigma attached to getting help for mental illness.
What I don't tell people is how severe my depression is. I'm on several different medications and I regularly see a doctor regarding my mood issues. Most of the time, my issues have been more related to anxiety, but recently, depression has once again become one of the issues that has come back up. Sometimes I honestly don't even notice the depression, except for the fact that I sleep between 12-15 hours a day. (At times, I have slept more, but The Boy has put a stop to that.) It's not until the medication kicks in really well at times and I'm more cheerful than I've been in ages that I remember what it's like to be the person I was in high school before this started.
It's also closely intertwined with my anxiety. In the last few months, I've been so agoraphobic that even the idea of leaving the house has caused me to burst into tears, and the only place I've been able to go has been to school. School, along with home, is safe, for some reason, and I can relax there, mostly. Still, there are days when I hide in my office and sometimes fight the urge to hide under my desk, even though I enjoy all of my officemates. The Boy wanted to go see his parents for several weekends in a row, but I simply could not face the idea of leaving home, even to go see my in-laws, who are as lovely, loving, and generous people as walk the earth.
The hardest part is trying to explain to my husband how I'm feeling. For being a writer, I'm crap with words most of the time, more so when depression is wearing me down, because that is the time when I want to talk the least. Often times, when I do manage to talk, I'm flippant, and I know that frustrates him, because while I'm talking, I'm still not being communicative. In fact, I'd thought about titling this post "The Care and Feeding of Your Depressive," because that's what I do when things get too serious--I make a joke, deflect it elsewhere, hold off the serious discussion.
But it's not a bad idea, in all seriousness. So here's my best shot--for my husband, for my family, for my friends, for the universe--the things I can't always say, the things that people like me can't always say, but need to. It's easier to write it than it is to talk about it.
1. I would give anything to be a Real Girl and to be the person you think I am.
Having depression sometimes feels like you've got someone working your puppet strings. You're going through the motions without ever really living. That's part of the reason it's hard to get involved in things, because it doesn't feel like it's actually you involved in the activity.
You can tell me that I'm beautiful, that you love me, that everything's going to be okay, and the voice in the back of my head is always going to be telling me that it's not true. Sometimes I can make it shut up and believe you. Sometimes I can't. But a lot of the time, that voice is also telling me that you fell in love with someone who was better, who wasn't as depressed, who functioned properly, who was cheerful and fun to be around. That voice is the voice that tells me that you would be better off with someone else who was right in the head.
2. I feel terrible.
I feel terrible on a ton of levels. There's the wet blanket of the depression. There's the heart-racing panic of an anxiety attack. For me, migraines come right along with anxiety attacks. Lots of people just experience general body aches and soreness from depression, actual physical symptoms that are no less real because they come from a mental source. I am tired all the time. A lot of the times, I really don't want to eat much. And I know that makes you worried. But then that leads to:
3. The Merry-Go-Round of Guilt.
I hate this. I already feel guilty for not being everything I think I should be for you. Then you want to help so badly, all the time, and it is so clear that you feel guilt for not being able to help, for not feeling like you are enough. Then that guilt comes back around for making you feel bad. It's less a merry-go-round than it is a gyre, circling around and around and never ending, whereas friction eventually causes a merry-go-round to stop.
Part of this is my fault. The depression makes me overly sensitive, and so I take every sigh, every tiny look of exasperation straight to heart. I appreciate the nods and the soft "Hey, call me if you need anything," but know that I won't call. There are a few people who I will vent to--but only vent, not cry to--because I can't deal with spreading that guilt elsewhere. There are some people who have to deal with it. I don't want to add that elsewhere.
4. Hulk go Smash
I don't want to say I have uncontrollable anger, because my anger is very definitely controlled--otherwise, countless dishes and household appliances would have been smashed by now, and there would be any number of people nursing wounds inflicted by my tongue. But it is always there lately. The urge to throw something, to put hit something, to rip something to shreds is bubbling below the surface, and there's little that would fill me with as much satisfaction as being set loose in a ceramic factory slated for destruction.
I don't know where this is coming from. It's something I've got to discuss with my doctor, because it's something that's been coming up again and again lately, more often as I get frustrated, usually with myself or with someone close to me, usually related to the merry-go-round of guilt because I simply want it to stop, and throwing something would be punctuation, the exclamation point to it all.
5. I'm trying.
It doesn't look like it. It looks like I'm lying on the couch, it looks like I'm diving into a book or the internet, or sleeping to get away. Yes, sometimes that's true. But I am trying. Part of the reason I'm so tired is because I am fighting every minute of the day. I try to do things to keep my energy up. I listen to really awful pop music because the beat keeps me up and going. I had a really awful caffeine addiction going (I have had to stop that, though). I try to have my classes scheduled as early as possible in the morning.
That also means I have to prioritize. If I've spent all day at school, then no, I don't want to go out to eat or hang out that evening. I'm tired, I've spent all my energy dealing with people, and I'm done fighting for the day. I have to put my energy where it's most needed. When you're suffering from agoraphobia, sometimes that means that you don't even have the energy to go to the grocery. And trust me, it sucks.
So why am I sleeping? Or reading some trashy book? Because for a brief moment in time, it shuts my brain down long enough, either by shutting it down in sleep, or by living some other existence in fiction, that my own is not so overwhelming.
As far as panic attacks go, I have no idea what sets them off. Sometimes I have a clear idea. Other days, I simply wake up with them. Sometimes they simply blindside me, and I find myself wanting to start crying for no reason. But most of the time, I can control myself, and you'll never know I was having one. I'd rather have it that way.
There is no "just getting over this." If you've ever said that to someone with depression or other illness, you should be ashamed of yourself for perpetuating the myth that mental illness is not a real, valid illness, and you are partly responsible for every crime committed by a person with a mental illness who was not able to receive the help they needed.
6. The fact that my existence is sometimes overwhelming to me has nothing to do with you.
It is not your fault. My brain chemistry is screwed up. You want to blame yourself? Fine. Then President Bartlet has something he wants to say to you.
You know what else? It's not my fault either.
And I have news for some people out there. I can and do pray about this. But continuing to have depression is not a measure of my faith or a sign that I do not pray enough or a sign that I believe things that God does not approve of.
It is a sign that God has great things ahead for me and that I will need the strength I am learning now to manage them.
Mother Teresa once said "I know God won't give me anything I can't handle. I just wish He didn't trust me so much." But if He trusts me in this, which is so relatively miniscule, then He will trust me with the big things.
This is my hope. This is what keeps me going when I think everything is falling apart around me, even when I know better. This is what helps me when I think that everyone else would be better off if I retreated from their lives and just lived my existence by myself with my cats, away from everyone else.
And hope is a thing with feathers.
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Book Review: Leaving Mundania
Stark, Lizzie. Leaving Mundania: Inside the Transformative World of Live Action Role-Playing Games. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2012. Paperback. +272 pages. $16.95. Release Date: 1 May 2012.
Full disclosure: I received an advance digital copy of this book for reviewing purposes.
Leaving Mundania was one of the more interesting books I've read in a while. Being a geek myself, I'm familiar with live action role-playing games. Many of my friends in college played, and while I never made it to an actual LARP event, I knew the basics of how to play, had my own boffer sword (think a homemade Nerf sword--a pool noodle carefully duct-taped around a PVC pipe), and enjoyed practicing beating the crap out of my friends with it.
I never went to a LARP event, because when you got right down to it, it meant camping and tromping through the woods, and well, I didn't want to go. I've always been much more of a table-top gaming girl myself (which I loved doing with these same friends). In the intervening years, the LARP that I knew has gone under, unfortunately, so my husband and his brother don't spend weekends "playing whoop-ass" (as my mother-in-law likes to refer to it).
This is the LARP I knew--going out, dressing up in funny costumes, and beating the crap out of your best buds with a Nerf sword while traipsing through the woods after "treasure." It meant many weekends making swords and sewing costumes (We learned how to make spider legs out of pantyhose) and a lot of fun. While I never went, I knew exactly what was going on, whose characters had done what, and what the plot was.
What I didn't realize until reading Leaving Mundania, is that is only one kind of LARP.
I suppose, in retrospect, I should have realized that. After all, I've played more than one table-top RPG and they all come together different. Star Wars and Star Trek play on two different systems (d20 and d6, respectively), while Dungeons and Dragons takes a different approach, and anything involving Cthulhu is completely different. Stark moves through several different kinds of LARP, from the boffer weapon LARP, to one that exists in a Nexus and allows people to play any kind of character they want, to the Society for Creative Anachronism, Cthulhu, and the more intense and strange Scandinavian LARPs.
First of all, Stark gets credit for being a nerd herself, though she obviously didn't start out as a LARPing nerd (few of us do, after all). She recognizes someone playing Susan from Terry Pratchett's Discworld, she cracks Star Trek and Star Wars jokes, and one of her chapters is titled "Cthulhu fhtagn!" So what I really liked about this book was that Stark went into it with respect. She even devotes an entire chapter to the misconceptions people have about LARPs, Dungeons and Dragons, and even Magic, after the 1980s and 1990s when parents were all told that these kinds of games were converting their children to devil worship, not realizing that a D&D game looks more like the 8-Bit re-enactment than something out of a bad Johnny Depp movie.
Despite her respect, there are a couple of problems--she highlights the polyamorous relationship of three players, which has very little to do with the actual game and is something that people who might be uncomfortable with LARPing to begin with could then use an an excuse not to get involved, if they were just exploring it based on Stark's book. But I am assuming that the people in this relationship said it was okay to use their full names, as Stark respects the wishes of those she interviews and withholds their names, as they don't want to be outed as LARPers. In the United States, she notes, LARPers can be outcasts even in the geek community.
What's of more interest to me was Stark's journey through LARP in history, which points out that entertainments put on for queens and kings of Britain mimicked LARPs. She also spends some time with the military and the exercises they use to immerse soldiers as much in a real world combat simulation as possible. And then she goes to Scandinavia to take part in more artistic LARPs that focus much more on emotional character development than anything else.
For all the time that Stark spends playing in LARPs and her conclusion, I'm still not sure that she would consider herself a LARPer, though. This still feels very much like the tale of an outsider, carefully trying to negotiate her way through a strange, new society. While granted, this may be true, I think I was hoping for an ending where she hadn't just gotten more comfortable with herself because she'd been around all these weirdos who had no problem dressing up, but an ending where she actually still felt like LARP would be part of her life. For all the tales of acceptance and fun of the LARP community, it still sounds like she's not entirely comfortable with it.
And granted, that's okay. LARP isn't for everyone. And overall, this book really does open LARP up to more people. If you're interested in learning about the different forms of LARP and LARPing, this is a great book to get you started.
Leaving Mundania - B+
Full disclosure: I received an advance digital copy of this book for reviewing purposes.
Leaving Mundania was one of the more interesting books I've read in a while. Being a geek myself, I'm familiar with live action role-playing games. Many of my friends in college played, and while I never made it to an actual LARP event, I knew the basics of how to play, had my own boffer sword (think a homemade Nerf sword--a pool noodle carefully duct-taped around a PVC pipe), and enjoyed practicing beating the crap out of my friends with it.
I never went to a LARP event, because when you got right down to it, it meant camping and tromping through the woods, and well, I didn't want to go. I've always been much more of a table-top gaming girl myself (which I loved doing with these same friends). In the intervening years, the LARP that I knew has gone under, unfortunately, so my husband and his brother don't spend weekends "playing whoop-ass" (as my mother-in-law likes to refer to it).
This is the LARP I knew--going out, dressing up in funny costumes, and beating the crap out of your best buds with a Nerf sword while traipsing through the woods after "treasure." It meant many weekends making swords and sewing costumes (We learned how to make spider legs out of pantyhose) and a lot of fun. While I never went, I knew exactly what was going on, whose characters had done what, and what the plot was.
What I didn't realize until reading Leaving Mundania, is that is only one kind of LARP.
I suppose, in retrospect, I should have realized that. After all, I've played more than one table-top RPG and they all come together different. Star Wars and Star Trek play on two different systems (d20 and d6, respectively), while Dungeons and Dragons takes a different approach, and anything involving Cthulhu is completely different. Stark moves through several different kinds of LARP, from the boffer weapon LARP, to one that exists in a Nexus and allows people to play any kind of character they want, to the Society for Creative Anachronism, Cthulhu, and the more intense and strange Scandinavian LARPs.
First of all, Stark gets credit for being a nerd herself, though she obviously didn't start out as a LARPing nerd (few of us do, after all). She recognizes someone playing Susan from Terry Pratchett's Discworld, she cracks Star Trek and Star Wars jokes, and one of her chapters is titled "Cthulhu fhtagn!" So what I really liked about this book was that Stark went into it with respect. She even devotes an entire chapter to the misconceptions people have about LARPs, Dungeons and Dragons, and even Magic, after the 1980s and 1990s when parents were all told that these kinds of games were converting their children to devil worship, not realizing that a D&D game looks more like the 8-Bit re-enactment than something out of a bad Johnny Depp movie.
Despite her respect, there are a couple of problems--she highlights the polyamorous relationship of three players, which has very little to do with the actual game and is something that people who might be uncomfortable with LARPing to begin with could then use an an excuse not to get involved, if they were just exploring it based on Stark's book. But I am assuming that the people in this relationship said it was okay to use their full names, as Stark respects the wishes of those she interviews and withholds their names, as they don't want to be outed as LARPers. In the United States, she notes, LARPers can be outcasts even in the geek community.
What's of more interest to me was Stark's journey through LARP in history, which points out that entertainments put on for queens and kings of Britain mimicked LARPs. She also spends some time with the military and the exercises they use to immerse soldiers as much in a real world combat simulation as possible. And then she goes to Scandinavia to take part in more artistic LARPs that focus much more on emotional character development than anything else.
For all the time that Stark spends playing in LARPs and her conclusion, I'm still not sure that she would consider herself a LARPer, though. This still feels very much like the tale of an outsider, carefully trying to negotiate her way through a strange, new society. While granted, this may be true, I think I was hoping for an ending where she hadn't just gotten more comfortable with herself because she'd been around all these weirdos who had no problem dressing up, but an ending where she actually still felt like LARP would be part of her life. For all the tales of acceptance and fun of the LARP community, it still sounds like she's not entirely comfortable with it.
And granted, that's okay. LARP isn't for everyone. And overall, this book really does open LARP up to more people. If you're interested in learning about the different forms of LARP and LARPing, this is a great book to get you started.
Leaving Mundania - B+
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Rage Against The Man!
Who, in this case, is the United States Congress. Wil Wheaton has said it much more eloquently (and ferociously) than I. 1984, anyone?
I think scholars should be particularly concerned, given "fair use" paradigms currently in play and possibilities that SOPA/PIPA could eventually bring to pass. After all, the free exchange of ideas is the most valued idea of the university setting, and the Internet has allowed that to be the closest reality it's likely to get in our lifetimes.
So contact your congresspeople and let them hear your voice. This is one bill the American public CAN--and IS--killing. You want to stop piracy? Great. But don't take away a free and open Internet--for people in and beyond the United States--to do it.
ETA: Want more info on exactly why it's bad? Read this article, originally from Mashable, on "Why SOPA is Dangerous."
I think scholars should be particularly concerned, given "fair use" paradigms currently in play and possibilities that SOPA/PIPA could eventually bring to pass. After all, the free exchange of ideas is the most valued idea of the university setting, and the Internet has allowed that to be the closest reality it's likely to get in our lifetimes.
So contact your congresspeople and let them hear your voice. This is one bill the American public CAN--and IS--killing. You want to stop piracy? Great. But don't take away a free and open Internet--for people in and beyond the United States--to do it.
ETA: Want more info on exactly why it's bad? Read this article, originally from Mashable, on "Why SOPA is Dangerous."
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Timeliness.
I'm always surprised when I read a book and it has some incredible relevance on my life. For example, after a visit from Gloria Steinem to my university and a rather upsetting argument with one of my colleagues, I read Joanna Russ' The Female Man for my class in Reading Postmodernism. It's a tale of four women--who might all be aspects of the same woman--moving through life, discovering and deciding what it means to be female.
The last book for my Postmodernism class has been an Egyptian novel, Being Abbas el Abd. Moving past the (postmodern) fact that it has been translated from Arabic into English, it is a book that I found primarily about fear and mental illness.
I should point out that I read Being Abbas el Abd in my bathtub. No, it was not with a lit candle and a glass of wine, as I might have preferred. Instead, I was hunkered down with pillows and a blanket, riding out three separate tornado warnings for the county. (I decided that if I was going to be spending that much time in the tub, I might as well be comfortable, and there is little as comforting as the heaviness of a quilt.) I have a deep fear of tornadoes, a fear known as lilapsophobia, a word unknown to me until today, a fear stemming from a traumatic childhood experience in a tornado.
Being Abbas el Abd is not necessarily a comforting book when it comes to fear--if you want a book that gives you strength in the face of fear, try Dune instead (fear is the mindkiller). But it does present an accurate picture of the cognitive process of someone with a mental disorder that heightens fear. As someone who has experienced that, I appreciated the depiction. It's something that I think postmodern literature does very well, something I also noticed in Chester's The Exquisite Corpse this semester. The fragmentation in the novels mirrors the fragmentation in the mind, and I cannot help but hope that novels like these will continue to help maintain the acceptance we are starting to exhibit for mental illnesses--both the severe and mild.
In the meantime, you'll have to excuse me. I may be spending the night in the bathtub.
The last book for my Postmodernism class has been an Egyptian novel, Being Abbas el Abd. Moving past the (postmodern) fact that it has been translated from Arabic into English, it is a book that I found primarily about fear and mental illness.
I should point out that I read Being Abbas el Abd in my bathtub. No, it was not with a lit candle and a glass of wine, as I might have preferred. Instead, I was hunkered down with pillows and a blanket, riding out three separate tornado warnings for the county. (I decided that if I was going to be spending that much time in the tub, I might as well be comfortable, and there is little as comforting as the heaviness of a quilt.) I have a deep fear of tornadoes, a fear known as lilapsophobia, a word unknown to me until today, a fear stemming from a traumatic childhood experience in a tornado.
Being Abbas el Abd is not necessarily a comforting book when it comes to fear--if you want a book that gives you strength in the face of fear, try Dune instead (fear is the mindkiller). But it does present an accurate picture of the cognitive process of someone with a mental disorder that heightens fear. As someone who has experienced that, I appreciated the depiction. It's something that I think postmodern literature does very well, something I also noticed in Chester's The Exquisite Corpse this semester. The fragmentation in the novels mirrors the fragmentation in the mind, and I cannot help but hope that novels like these will continue to help maintain the acceptance we are starting to exhibit for mental illnesses--both the severe and mild.
In the meantime, you'll have to excuse me. I may be spending the night in the bathtub.
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