"Zoology, eh? That's a big word, isn't it."
"No, actually it isn't," said Tiffany. "Patronizing is a big word. Zoology is really quite short."
The Wee Free Men
"The trouble with witches is that they'll never run away from things they really hate.
And the trouble with small furry animals in the corner is that, just occasionally, one of them's a mongoose"
Witches Abroad
" 'Things that try to look like things often do look more like things than things. Well-known fact,' said Granny"
Wyrd Sisters
"You can't trample infidels when you're a tortoise, I mean all you can give them is a meaningful look" Small Gods
"The labyrinth of Ephebe is ancient and full of one hundred and one
amazing things you can do with hidden springs, razor-sharp knives and
falling rocks"
Small Gods
"Racism is not a problem on the
Discworld, because - what with the trolls and dwarves and so on -
specieism is more interesting. Black and white live in harmony and gang
up on green"
Witches Abroad
"The Duke had a mind that ticked like a clock, and, like a clock, it regularly went cuckoo"
Wyrd Sisters
"Poets have tried to describe Ankh-Morpork. They have failed. Perhaps
its the sheer zestful vitality of the place, or maybe its just that a
city with a million inhabitants and no sewers is rather robust for
poets, who prefer daffodils and no wonder"
Mort
"Destiny is
something you cannot escape, such as death, or a cheesecake that has
curdled, both of which always turn up sooner or later"
Lemony Snicket
"If you are allergic to a thing, it is best not to put that thing in your mouth, especially if that thing is cats"
Lemony Snicket
"It is very unnerving to be proven wrong, particularly when you are
really right and the person who is wrong is the one proving you wrong
and proving himself, wrongly, right. Right?"
Lemony Snicket
"Mummy snores like a monster, it goes RAWR"
little kid on tv show The Doctors
Friday, 31 August 2012
Things We Learn
From the moment we are born we learn things. Sensory input from our ears, eyes, skin, nose, mouth, internal nervous system, everything starts to collect information for us, providing us with experiences which inform us about the world around us. Other human beings then start using these inbuilt sensors to teach us about how to use this experiences in order to survive, both physically, like how not to burn or stab oneself, and psychologically, like how to fit in with the social expectations of the culture you were born into. Despite these peoples best efforts we will start to form our own private opinions on the world around us, developing our own instincts in order to protect us from the world and begin to develop instinctive reactions to the thing around us that were created by social interaction, as opposed to natural instincts that inform us when we should eat and when we should sleep. We learn to balance our natural instincts with our developed instincts and then we become people like everyone else.
And people are terrible in deciding what is a natural instinct and what is a created instinct. We behave and react in ways developed and decided upon by our experiences in trying to survive in the human world that is not governed by natural principles but by principles governed by cultural ideologies. We assume on the most part that the principles of life as laid out by the cultural ideologies of the social group we were born into are the natural principles of life. Sometimes we break out, we try to go back to a simpler way of living, a way of life more in sinc with nature. But we fail at this every time because it is still based on a culturally based ideology, because no matter what, we cannot escape our experiences. We cannot escape our ability to turn basic sensory information into little pieces of data that fit into a wider framework of what we know as our existence. The basic fact that we ponder our existence in the first place.
But this is not a rant about philosophy. Or a psychological delve into anthropological ideas or even a delve into our own psychology itself. This is me, and I wish to talk about the things we learn in life. Nothing deep, nothing particularly informative. The first section was simply me trying to regain what is left of my intelligence and ability to make complex arguments in a semi academical way. Self serving, yes. Self important? Hell yes. I like to occasionally think of myself as an academic creature. The fact that I am writing this in a couch chair, in the lounge of a rental house, whilst I am jobless, relying on the government to survive and am incapable at this time of leaving the house due to a rising feeling of inadequacy is besides the point. I prefer to think of it as me being a genius that is hiding my brilliance away from the world in order to stop people from people being blinded by said brilliance. What I have learned from simply writing this is that I am sincerely bored with my life, but have a lack of motivation in order for me to do anything to fix it. Not for the first time I have learned that I am lazy.
But this article is not primarily about me. After all I did use the word "We" in the title, not "Me". So, what do we learn? Movies tell us that we learn many things in life, most of them revolving around learning to love. Love what exactly? Ourselves, those close to us, love our job, our position in life, strangers. Learn from our suffering as well. Or if our lives are seemingly perfect, learn through the suffering of others until we have some sort of life affirming moment that leads back around to learning about love. But we all know from our own experiences that movies are rather more formulaic than real life. I guess what I am saying is that one of the things we learn is that life does not work like a movie plot.
But this is not about silly life observations of the fact that life is never like a story. This is about deeper truths. Just to clarify I said "deeper", I did not say "deep". That would imply that these truths will reveal anything about the depths of our hearts and minds, reveal the soul etc...because it won't. Maybe one day I will write something deep, something about my own personal theological views of the world. This is not that article. I really don't have the brain power. Deeper implies that it won't be some everyday observation, but not so deep that it will instill in you, the reader, with some kind of soul searching thought. If it does then you are having a much more intelligent day than I am. Either that or your some sort of psychologist trying to ream information about myself so that you can analyse me. If so your creepy. Go away and delve deeply into someones else psyche, mine is off limits thank you very much. (I just scrunched up my face and poked my tongue out at you, just so you know).
This ridiculously long piece of rambling is about the Things We Learn. Simple things. Let me list a few hings that I have learned in the past week.
1) If I keep getting the same haircut then of course people won't notice. They are not the ones that obsessively look at my hair in the mirror, it is me that does that. If you are the type of person that obsessively uses a mirror to look at someone else hair then that's just creepy and you really shouldn't do that. Especially if it involves you hiding in a bathroom or waiting til the person is asleep.
2) That catching one piece of public transport to a place nearby is an acceptable effort, but having to change over to a second piece of transport (or worse, more than 2) is horrible, way too much effort and as such one shall stay home thank you very much. This is not out of laziness, but a piece of logic happens to see that it something is illogical, one must not do it. Because we all know public transport is meant to be logical and all.
3) That yet again a sarcasm font would be a brilliant thing to have, but at the same time it would be annoying and also an eyesore to change font every time you wish to convey a different tone of
speech. I like my sense of aesthetics, changing fonts ruins that.
Now, this finally leads to my point. Ha, you thought I would never reach it did you? Millytalksalot would simply talk a lot. Well, I never, judging a blog by it's name, how dare you? I mean seriously, how dare you? I would like to know. Mainly because I like the idea that someones sense of bias is due to them being daring, as opposed to them being human and programmed to judge things according to how their society raised them ideologically. Also it's really fun to say. The best results are when you say it with an imperious aristocratic English accent. Like a 60 something society dame floating around the inner circles of upper class London. Also fun to say is "Well I never" in the same way. Did you notice my wonderfulness of putting both sayings in the same sentence? Re-read that sentence, out loud, in that voice. Try not to smile....I dare you.
Anyway, back to the point. My point here is that we are always learning something. And that something is usually trivial, but at the same time informs us in such a way that it affects our nature. Affects our reactions to things. It is the way that they inform us in a way that is apart from the Things We Need To Learn, those things don't incite curiosity. They don't incite imagination. They don't excite the mind. The Thing We Need To Learn is how to eat with a spoon, but the Things We Learn, is how our reflection goes all funny due to the curved surface of the spoon. The first means we now know how to efficiently transfer food into our mouth form whatever object it was previously on, the second makes us wonder why curved surfaces do that to our reflection. This doesn't mean it will make us delve into how light refraction or eyesight works, but it certainly does provide in the least some bemused confusion and amusement.
It is the simple fact that trivial things create moments, thoughts and ideas that are far from trivial. It is the Things We Learn. And they are wonderful.
And people are terrible in deciding what is a natural instinct and what is a created instinct. We behave and react in ways developed and decided upon by our experiences in trying to survive in the human world that is not governed by natural principles but by principles governed by cultural ideologies. We assume on the most part that the principles of life as laid out by the cultural ideologies of the social group we were born into are the natural principles of life. Sometimes we break out, we try to go back to a simpler way of living, a way of life more in sinc with nature. But we fail at this every time because it is still based on a culturally based ideology, because no matter what, we cannot escape our experiences. We cannot escape our ability to turn basic sensory information into little pieces of data that fit into a wider framework of what we know as our existence. The basic fact that we ponder our existence in the first place.
But this is not a rant about philosophy. Or a psychological delve into anthropological ideas or even a delve into our own psychology itself. This is me, and I wish to talk about the things we learn in life. Nothing deep, nothing particularly informative. The first section was simply me trying to regain what is left of my intelligence and ability to make complex arguments in a semi academical way. Self serving, yes. Self important? Hell yes. I like to occasionally think of myself as an academic creature. The fact that I am writing this in a couch chair, in the lounge of a rental house, whilst I am jobless, relying on the government to survive and am incapable at this time of leaving the house due to a rising feeling of inadequacy is besides the point. I prefer to think of it as me being a genius that is hiding my brilliance away from the world in order to stop people from people being blinded by said brilliance. What I have learned from simply writing this is that I am sincerely bored with my life, but have a lack of motivation in order for me to do anything to fix it. Not for the first time I have learned that I am lazy.
But this article is not primarily about me. After all I did use the word "We" in the title, not "Me". So, what do we learn? Movies tell us that we learn many things in life, most of them revolving around learning to love. Love what exactly? Ourselves, those close to us, love our job, our position in life, strangers. Learn from our suffering as well. Or if our lives are seemingly perfect, learn through the suffering of others until we have some sort of life affirming moment that leads back around to learning about love. But we all know from our own experiences that movies are rather more formulaic than real life. I guess what I am saying is that one of the things we learn is that life does not work like a movie plot.
But this is not about silly life observations of the fact that life is never like a story. This is about deeper truths. Just to clarify I said "deeper", I did not say "deep". That would imply that these truths will reveal anything about the depths of our hearts and minds, reveal the soul etc...because it won't. Maybe one day I will write something deep, something about my own personal theological views of the world. This is not that article. I really don't have the brain power. Deeper implies that it won't be some everyday observation, but not so deep that it will instill in you, the reader, with some kind of soul searching thought. If it does then you are having a much more intelligent day than I am. Either that or your some sort of psychologist trying to ream information about myself so that you can analyse me. If so your creepy. Go away and delve deeply into someones else psyche, mine is off limits thank you very much. (I just scrunched up my face and poked my tongue out at you, just so you know).
This ridiculously long piece of rambling is about the Things We Learn. Simple things. Let me list a few hings that I have learned in the past week.
1) If I keep getting the same haircut then of course people won't notice. They are not the ones that obsessively look at my hair in the mirror, it is me that does that. If you are the type of person that obsessively uses a mirror to look at someone else hair then that's just creepy and you really shouldn't do that. Especially if it involves you hiding in a bathroom or waiting til the person is asleep.
2) That catching one piece of public transport to a place nearby is an acceptable effort, but having to change over to a second piece of transport (or worse, more than 2) is horrible, way too much effort and as such one shall stay home thank you very much. This is not out of laziness, but a piece of logic happens to see that it something is illogical, one must not do it. Because we all know public transport is meant to be logical and all.
3) That yet again a sarcasm font would be a brilliant thing to have, but at the same time it would be annoying and also an eyesore to change font every time you wish to convey a different tone of
speech. I like my sense of aesthetics, changing fonts ruins that.
Now, this finally leads to my point. Ha, you thought I would never reach it did you? Millytalksalot would simply talk a lot. Well, I never, judging a blog by it's name, how dare you? I mean seriously, how dare you? I would like to know. Mainly because I like the idea that someones sense of bias is due to them being daring, as opposed to them being human and programmed to judge things according to how their society raised them ideologically. Also it's really fun to say. The best results are when you say it with an imperious aristocratic English accent. Like a 60 something society dame floating around the inner circles of upper class London. Also fun to say is "Well I never" in the same way. Did you notice my wonderfulness of putting both sayings in the same sentence? Re-read that sentence, out loud, in that voice. Try not to smile....I dare you.
Anyway, back to the point. My point here is that we are always learning something. And that something is usually trivial, but at the same time informs us in such a way that it affects our nature. Affects our reactions to things. It is the way that they inform us in a way that is apart from the Things We Need To Learn, those things don't incite curiosity. They don't incite imagination. They don't excite the mind. The Thing We Need To Learn is how to eat with a spoon, but the Things We Learn, is how our reflection goes all funny due to the curved surface of the spoon. The first means we now know how to efficiently transfer food into our mouth form whatever object it was previously on, the second makes us wonder why curved surfaces do that to our reflection. This doesn't mean it will make us delve into how light refraction or eyesight works, but it certainly does provide in the least some bemused confusion and amusement.
It is the simple fact that trivial things create moments, thoughts and ideas that are far from trivial. It is the Things We Learn. And they are wonderful.
Thursday, 23 August 2012
"Alien sex, is dangerous sex"
As I sit here, indulging in my love for both noodles and English comedic television, I am struck by the line as said by an educational recording (and mouthed along to by Teal) that really says everything. "Alien sex, is dangerous sex." What a wonderful piece of advice. If Doctor Who is anything to go by that advice is not the kind of advice the human race will ever adhere to. But as the rest of the episode of Hyperdrive tells us, fraternising with sentient beings of other planets leads to unwanted marriages and ludicrous escape plans. Now, this is going to go somewhere, where that is I don't actually know right at this point.
This line resonated with me. The educational recording ended on that wonderful line after talking briefly of there being more than two arms and or the presence of tentacles to stop and think about the actions one is ab out to make. How else would one know to not have sexual relations with another not of ones own species I do not know. The advice one can get from humorous tv shows is marvelous. It informs us of both our promising highs and our degrading lows. All for our amusement. Our wonderful, laugh out loud amusement. Set in another reality, another time, and with fantastical peoples, beasts and robots, we can laugh our asses off at idiotic people in idiotic situations. Also there is pretty colours and silly noises as well.
But back onto the original point of this, "Alien sex. is dangerous sex." How one can find this useful in everyday life can be seen in a myriad of ways. First, in this galactic age, you have to be aware of the damage you can do to your self esteem if you choose to inhabit the same sleeping place as a martian. I mean really, naming the new Mars rover Curiosity is like a announcing that we as humans are a bunch of oversexed and over easy college girls. Sure, we are intelligent, but we are also curious, this can only lead to a human leaving the habitation quarters of an alien life form feeling sad and full of self loathing.
Second, physical injury. You would think that this would be the first issue arising from Alien sex but since humans are a sadistic bunch I feel it is best relegated in second place to feelings of loathing and shame. Who knows what kind of bodily fluids Aliens could have and what affects they would have on the human system. Well I certainly don't know and because I choose to adhere to the brilliant advice of the HMS Camdon Locke's education video I won't find out.
Well, rambling is a wonderful thing. If you can understand any of what I just wrote please feel free to tell me and translate.
Love you all,
Milly
This line resonated with me. The educational recording ended on that wonderful line after talking briefly of there being more than two arms and or the presence of tentacles to stop and think about the actions one is ab out to make. How else would one know to not have sexual relations with another not of ones own species I do not know. The advice one can get from humorous tv shows is marvelous. It informs us of both our promising highs and our degrading lows. All for our amusement. Our wonderful, laugh out loud amusement. Set in another reality, another time, and with fantastical peoples, beasts and robots, we can laugh our asses off at idiotic people in idiotic situations. Also there is pretty colours and silly noises as well.
But back onto the original point of this, "Alien sex. is dangerous sex." How one can find this useful in everyday life can be seen in a myriad of ways. First, in this galactic age, you have to be aware of the damage you can do to your self esteem if you choose to inhabit the same sleeping place as a martian. I mean really, naming the new Mars rover Curiosity is like a announcing that we as humans are a bunch of oversexed and over easy college girls. Sure, we are intelligent, but we are also curious, this can only lead to a human leaving the habitation quarters of an alien life form feeling sad and full of self loathing.
Second, physical injury. You would think that this would be the first issue arising from Alien sex but since humans are a sadistic bunch I feel it is best relegated in second place to feelings of loathing and shame. Who knows what kind of bodily fluids Aliens could have and what affects they would have on the human system. Well I certainly don't know and because I choose to adhere to the brilliant advice of the HMS Camdon Locke's education video I won't find out.
Well, rambling is a wonderful thing. If you can understand any of what I just wrote please feel free to tell me and translate.
Love you all,
Milly
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)