I just returned from the midnight showing of Into Darkness, the newest in the Star Trek reboot, so if you don’t want spoilers, don’t read on.
Continue reading The militarization of Starfleet and the future of the United Nations
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I’m a geek. I was in a book about it before I could vote, and it’s been part of my identity since long before that. I’m not always out as a geek, because sometimes it’s not relevant to a given conversation or sometimes I would impede my ability to get things done. I’m always on the lookout for other geeks to geek out with. I found a good group recently through a local comic book convention, and since we were all “Nerdy and Proud” there was no coming out process. Honestly, I was wearing full theatrical make-up and 2 of the group were wearing large Time Lord costumes; there was nothing to be coy about. Because there’s a price to being coy. Wearing my professional mask tied too tightly could lead me to suffer the fate of characters in this Silverstein poem, which I fittingly first discovered as part of a merlin photoset (photo set original source and source for me).
A comic convention is one big nerd courtship ritual. More than any other subculture of which I am a part, it’s clear in fandom circles that courtship isn’t about dating–it’s sometimes about having someone to spend time with who obsesses in the same way I do. While over 10% of the staff of my work attended this particular convention, my workplace is not focused on promoting nerdy, fandom, or other (delightful) forms of geekery. It’s a leading anti-human trafficking nonprofit. When I want to figure out if someone I think I might be able to geek out with is also a nerd, I need to engage in subtle nerd courthsip. There are subtle ways to get other geek’s attention. T-shirts are one kind of nerd courtship mating call (here’s more on tribal shibboleths and t-shirts); verbal ticks from tv shows are another (“Frack! I thought that game was going to be shiny, but the representation of women is wigging me out.”); office nesting habits can be another (a co-worker of mine has covered an entire wall with Star Wars paraphernalia in his workspace). The goal of all of these friend of Dorothy-esque overtures is to get people around me to reveal their inner nerd. Neal Stephenson in his wonderful Some Remarks: Essays and Other Writing describes this moment as putting our Vulan ears on, after having a professional and visibly reserved waiter drop everything to ask about what Lucy Lawless is like in person (Mundanes = non-nerds):
It’s all part of my process to building a community of my own on the East Coast. Today I stepped back into my first home community at the 2013 Peninsula Spring Fair. It was a place where a lot of people know me, and I know a lot of people. It’s a place I grew up and feel unbelievably safe. It takes work and time and connection to build a place like that, but the first step is being able to be myself. And so I look for people to geek out with, because when I am most myself, I am a geek. Inspirational Quote:The Doctor: Big finish. Two more minutes, then we’re off. The Eye of Orion’s restful. If you like restful. I could never really get the hang of restful. What do you think, dear? Huh? Where should we take the kids this time? Amy: Look at you pair. It’s always you and her isn’t it? Long after the rest of us have gone. A boy and his box off to see the universe. The Doctor: Well you say that as if it’s a bad thing. But honestly it’s the best thing there is. –The Doctor’s Wife, by Neil Gaiman This weekend I spent 3 of my 24 hours in Seattle hiking with two friends (one of whom I’m married to). I Googled “Seattle Nature” and found Rattlesnake Ridge, which looked far enough away to feel like an adventure.
I wore the clothes I boarded my plane from DC in, having dressed for hiking in the dark of the morning. The walk started out slow and low and easy, with soaring trees and a clear path like I enjoyed in Muir Woods back home:
But the foliage got lighter and furrier, closer to truffala trees than Tolkien’s whispering forests.
As I’d hoped, there was evidence of great geological upsets–a single massive igneous boulder, born of lava and borne by a glacier until it retreated, leaving it to make friends with the moss and the encroaching trees.
When I was so tired and travel weary I reached out my hand behind my hip, in the universal sign for “hold my hand” and Matthew held my fingers and I created things to take photos of to find time to breath, we came upon this. The tops of very tall trees at our feet. We were closer to our destination than my aches had murmured we were.
When we reached the summit, it was clear of foliage and flora. It was a weather-beaten hump, cracked with the slow expanding force of ice and trickling water. Over the edge came to us a view out into the valley, over the lake, to the distant mountains and the nearly perfectly flat tops of thousands of growing trees. The wind pushed us towards the edge and the drop, but we kept back, scooting as close as our warring pride and fear would let us.
Our emotions and the ice-rock contest were not the only battles being waged on Rattlesnake Ridge. The wind and the mist teased and slipped around each other, mist wafting around the demarcated edge and wind shooing it back again, then mist rising in a rough billow and the wind whistling and whirling it into its own half of the world.
With all the talking the wind and water were doing, there wasn’t much for us people up there to say. We mostly looked out over the cliff, across into the blue sky arcing above and the tree-furred earth below.
We never did figure out what made the mists rise so thickly from particular vents in the forrest, leaving others clear and clean. The entire drive up, it looked like collections of farmsteads with warming fires, but so many in so many places which we did not expect to be so occupied lead us to suppose some other, more meteorological, cause for their rising clouds.
But even in so much beauty, some of us were meant for posing. Perhaps because of it, I wanted to make sure I had an image of how I felt, of what I look like in my own head. When I wear my clothes to work, I feel like I’m cosplaying a professional. The Jessica in my head has waist-length braids, jeans, hiking boots, and a t-shirt she can climb trees in. Days like that one fill me up with the experiences and thoughts and memories that ensure I stay bigger on the inside. Inspirational Quote:“From way up here, A friend posted this on Facebook. It’s a blog of images of Americans saying something which we should not have to say, but which today‘s ignorant coverage reminded me more than ever we must say: We are America and we do not hate Muslims. I joined in evincing solidarity by posting making this image my profile picture on Facebook:  Jessica Dickinson Goodman: “Muslim women are my sisters and Muslim men are my brothers.” It is so desperately important that we stop the flow of hate towards Muslims and Muslim Americans, as we failed to stop its flow after 9/11. We are all family and we cannot treat each other as any less. We will not. (You might remember I did something similar 12 years ago). Inspirational Quote:“Here is my advice as we begin the century that will lead to 2081. First, guard the freedom of ideas at all costs. Be alert that dictators have always played on the natural human tendency to blame others and to oversimplify. And don’t regard yourself as a guardian of freedom unless you respect and preserve the rights of people you disagree with to free, public, unhampered expression.”–Gerard K. O’Neill, 2081 This is the trouble with growing up polite. When I am angry, really angry, I swear like a child. A small, pigtailed, pink-dress-wearing child. Below is an actual example from last night when I accidentally put myself on the wrong side of the Potomac for my choir practice, and my friend who gives me a ride from the Metro station texted me:
Now, when I’m playing around or having fun, I swear using normal American (and occasionally British) cusswords, grown-up cusswords. If my work computer had telepathy, particularly when she fails to connect to the server, she would know a good many of them as I hiss them at her silently. My home computer knows them, particularly lately since Skype has deigned to take up up to 60% of my CPU usage, making uploading the photo above during my call with Matthew an ugly chore. But when I’m angry? It’s all “Sugar!” and “Darn!” and “Fudge!” and “Son of a Basket!” and “Goshdarnit!” I remember being the only 3rd grader who wouldn’t swear, when swears were new and exciting and important to sounding like an adult. Around that time, an adult friend told me to keep my swearing to a minimum so that when I dropped an anvil on my foot, I had sufficiently big words to encapsulate the feeling. But a few weeks ago, when I was running down the back alley trying to catch someone who’d just left the office? And I didn’t see her down the block? And this was a huge deal? I jumped up and down, my dress shirt rutching askew. I shook my fist and glared at where I wanted her to reappear. And I said: “Sugar! Goshdarnit–fudge, fudge, fudge!” Inspirational Quote:“You’ve got a lot of choices. If getting out of bed in the morning is a chore and you’re not smiling on a regular basis, try another choice.”–Steven D. Woodhull (U.S. geologist, 1976 – ) |
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