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Well, at least we're progressing with a theme.
Tuesday, 12 January 2016 06:55 pmSo far it looks like 2016 is going to be the year in which I upset and/or alienate everyone I know.
Good times!
Good times!
Just putting this here so I can admire it forever.
Friday, 4 April 2014 04:43 amFinally, the perfect response to the usual You can't criticize nonsense.
You know what I'm talking about. The thin-skinned writer who gets irate and insists that you can't criticize his work because you're not a best-selling author. The artist's friend who overhears you point out that the figure is a little stiff and loudly interjects that you're just jealous because you can't draw. The asshole who whips out a snotty variant of "Those who can't do, teach," or in this case, "What qualifies you to teach? If you were an expert, you'd be doing!" That nonsense.
Here it is, courtesy of a commenter (wlubake) at Scriptshadow: "This is asinine. Teaching comes from analyzing a craft. It is a completely different skill set than having the creativity to actually perform the craft."
Fuck, yes. It is a completely different skill set. Teaching and creating involve different skills. Performing and analyzing involve different skills. The skills needed to mentally deconstruct a work, analyze the pieces, and offer that analysis to others in a way that they can understand - those aren't the skills the writer or artist or chef or whatever uses to put the work together in the first place.
Of course, the opposite is also true - just as your favorite writer about their experiences with writing groups, and that one participant who thinks applying regurgitated writing blog tips to a story is the same thing as analyzing.
You know what I'm talking about. The thin-skinned writer who gets irate and insists that you can't criticize his work because you're not a best-selling author. The artist's friend who overhears you point out that the figure is a little stiff and loudly interjects that you're just jealous because you can't draw. The asshole who whips out a snotty variant of "Those who can't do, teach," or in this case, "What qualifies you to teach? If you were an expert, you'd be doing!" That nonsense.
Here it is, courtesy of a commenter (wlubake) at Scriptshadow: "This is asinine. Teaching comes from analyzing a craft. It is a completely different skill set than having the creativity to actually perform the craft."
Fuck, yes. It is a completely different skill set. Teaching and creating involve different skills. Performing and analyzing involve different skills. The skills needed to mentally deconstruct a work, analyze the pieces, and offer that analysis to others in a way that they can understand - those aren't the skills the writer or artist or chef or whatever uses to put the work together in the first place.
Of course, the opposite is also true - just as your favorite writer about their experiences with writing groups, and that one participant who thinks applying regurgitated writing blog tips to a story is the same thing as analyzing.
I can't even social my media.
Friday, 28 March 2014 11:13 pmI have discovered a feeling more frustrating than having to interact when I'm feeling hermit-ish: being all out of social energy when all I want to do is be social.
The cold weather is mostly past, and I am itching to get out of the house and roam. Spring is ready to unleash some seasonal loveliness all over the place, and I am itching to photograph it. Things are happening around town, and I am itching to be there. There's a whole slew of local people whose company I enjoy, and I am itching to enjoy it.
And yet, I can't social. Half an hour of people-time and I'm out of social for the day. I don't explode in grumpiness, I just hit an exhausted but polite nodding stage.
Maybe my need to socialize is being trumped by my need to go outside and play...
The cold weather is mostly past, and I am itching to get out of the house and roam. Spring is ready to unleash some seasonal loveliness all over the place, and I am itching to photograph it. Things are happening around town, and I am itching to be there. There's a whole slew of local people whose company I enjoy, and I am itching to enjoy it.
And yet, I can't social. Half an hour of people-time and I'm out of social for the day. I don't explode in grumpiness, I just hit an exhausted but polite nodding stage.
Maybe my need to socialize is being trumped by my need to go outside and play...
The Funeral Principle
Sunday, 2 February 2014 12:14 pmWhy do so many family fights and feuds begin with funerals? Because it's easier to fight than it is to feel.
Sadness and grief are helpless feelings. You can't do anything about them. You just slog through, and even if you slog through, it gets you nothing - it doesn't bring someone back, it doesn't undo the cause of your sadness. You just endure it. It's so much easier to feel angry, because it makes you feel like there's something you can do about it.
Being sad won't bring your loved one back, but you don't have to realize you feel sad if you're busy being mad at your brother. You're helpless in the face of your grief, but in your anger you can ban your brother's family from your home. A measure of that drowning wave of emotion is repackaged as anger, because you can do something about anger - you can hang it on someone else's neck and drive them out. When the emotion creeps up later, it tells you it's anger - Can you believe he did that?! - and you can tell yourself you've done something about it.
Once I saw this pattern in my own behavior - I'm frustrated/tense because [depression/grief/etc.] and I'm not dealing with it directly - I learned how to slow down and turn that energy towards the actual problem. I also learned that I'm not an emotionally stunted freak, and this is pretty common. Most importantly, I got a sense for my schedule - for example, that February was always terrible, and it had to do with being cooped up and oversocialized in December and then numb in January.
Between snow days and cabin fever, this month has been full of people throwing matches and punches. I don't know if this year is worse than most or if it just seems that way because I'm outside it this year, since the flu knocked me off my ass for two weeks (and wobbly for two more) and so I've had plenty of people-free time.
Or maybe I vent my grumblies through TV shows about cannibal serial killers and zombie presidents nowadays. That's healthy too, right? Sure it is.
Sadness and grief are helpless feelings. You can't do anything about them. You just slog through, and even if you slog through, it gets you nothing - it doesn't bring someone back, it doesn't undo the cause of your sadness. You just endure it. It's so much easier to feel angry, because it makes you feel like there's something you can do about it.
Being sad won't bring your loved one back, but you don't have to realize you feel sad if you're busy being mad at your brother. You're helpless in the face of your grief, but in your anger you can ban your brother's family from your home. A measure of that drowning wave of emotion is repackaged as anger, because you can do something about anger - you can hang it on someone else's neck and drive them out. When the emotion creeps up later, it tells you it's anger - Can you believe he did that?! - and you can tell yourself you've done something about it.
Once I saw this pattern in my own behavior - I'm frustrated/tense because [depression/grief/etc.] and I'm not dealing with it directly - I learned how to slow down and turn that energy towards the actual problem. I also learned that I'm not an emotionally stunted freak, and this is pretty common. Most importantly, I got a sense for my schedule - for example, that February was always terrible, and it had to do with being cooped up and oversocialized in December and then numb in January.
Between snow days and cabin fever, this month has been full of people throwing matches and punches. I don't know if this year is worse than most or if it just seems that way because I'm outside it this year, since the flu knocked me off my ass for two weeks (and wobbly for two more) and so I've had plenty of people-free time.
Or maybe I vent my grumblies through TV shows about cannibal serial killers and zombie presidents nowadays. That's healthy too, right? Sure it is.
I will tattoo this to my face one day, to save time.
Saturday, 15 December 2012 05:05 amDear World:
I have a terrible sense of humor that skews dark and moody at times--especially in dark and moody times like these. I crack jokes not because I'm a bad person, or an insincere person, or an unsympathetic person, or because I can't take serious things as seriously as they need to be taken. I crack jokes because I can't walk around all gothy with my naked lacerated soul exposed to the salty, lemon juice-covered whip o' fate. I'm not wired for that kind of emotional exposure.
One person's wailing and gnashing is no more or less moral than another person's stiff upper lip, but realize that neither is more or less moral, either, than still another person's daring to crack a joke at a funeral. People cope in different ways.
As if this weren't bad enough, I also tend to slip into thinky-thinky headspace instead of emotional space when emotions are running very high, because I need things to make sense, and in some ways I think my emotions better than I feel them. It's hard to explain, but again, no less legitimate than anyone else's reactions.
The relevance to you is that I may respond to long rants about the evils of evil things with something that starts, "Well, technically..." and goes downhill from there.
I'm not trying to pick a fight or piss you off. I'm usually good (I think) about realizing when a rant is a rant and not a dialogue or an opening to a discussion, and staying out of the way. But sometimes my radar on this slips up, and I try to debate when you're trying to stomp, and it gets all fucked up. It's not personal, and I welcome you to tell me you're in rant mode--I'll back off and we'll both be spared some hard feelings.
The one thing I will not do, World, is let you chastise me for how I feel during troubled times, criticize how I express those feelings, or dictate to me the proper way to 'be'. Try it and I'll show you some emotion, starting with rage and ending with my foot up your ass. (It's one of those German emotions we don't have a name for: schoedenrump, the mortification of finding your moral superiority suddenly lodged in your colon.)
In closing, World, I know we don't always operate the same way, but that's the beauty of this whole Earthling experience. Some of us put it into song, some of us put it into action, some of us put it into a pint of ice cream and a sad movie marathon, but at the end of the day, we're sharing it, and that's the important part. Except the ice cream. Get your own.
Yours truly,
the always socially inept mokie
I have a terrible sense of humor that skews dark and moody at times--especially in dark and moody times like these. I crack jokes not because I'm a bad person, or an insincere person, or an unsympathetic person, or because I can't take serious things as seriously as they need to be taken. I crack jokes because I can't walk around all gothy with my naked lacerated soul exposed to the salty, lemon juice-covered whip o' fate. I'm not wired for that kind of emotional exposure.
One person's wailing and gnashing is no more or less moral than another person's stiff upper lip, but realize that neither is more or less moral, either, than still another person's daring to crack a joke at a funeral. People cope in different ways.
As if this weren't bad enough, I also tend to slip into thinky-thinky headspace instead of emotional space when emotions are running very high, because I need things to make sense, and in some ways I think my emotions better than I feel them. It's hard to explain, but again, no less legitimate than anyone else's reactions.
The relevance to you is that I may respond to long rants about the evils of evil things with something that starts, "Well, technically..." and goes downhill from there.
I'm not trying to pick a fight or piss you off. I'm usually good (I think) about realizing when a rant is a rant and not a dialogue or an opening to a discussion, and staying out of the way. But sometimes my radar on this slips up, and I try to debate when you're trying to stomp, and it gets all fucked up. It's not personal, and I welcome you to tell me you're in rant mode--I'll back off and we'll both be spared some hard feelings.
The one thing I will not do, World, is let you chastise me for how I feel during troubled times, criticize how I express those feelings, or dictate to me the proper way to 'be'. Try it and I'll show you some emotion, starting with rage and ending with my foot up your ass. (It's one of those German emotions we don't have a name for: schoedenrump, the mortification of finding your moral superiority suddenly lodged in your colon.)
In closing, World, I know we don't always operate the same way, but that's the beauty of this whole Earthling experience. Some of us put it into song, some of us put it into action, some of us put it into a pint of ice cream and a sad movie marathon, but at the end of the day, we're sharing it, and that's the important part. Except the ice cream. Get your own.
Yours truly,
the always socially inept mokie
